S2 The American Geologist. August, i90i'. 
Little Prairie seemed the center, but vibrations were felt all over 
the Mississippi valley as far up as Pittsburgh. An engineer on a flat 
boat 40 miles below New Madrid with a load of produce says that 
in the night while his boat was lying along shore a shock was felt and 
the men hurried on deck thinking that the Indians had made an attack. 
After daylight, as they were preparing to depart, a loud roaring was 
heard sounding like steam escaping from a boiler. This was accompan- 
ied b)' a violent agitation of the shores and tremendous boiling up of 
the waters in huge swells and tossing the boats so violently that the 
men with difficulty could keep upon their feet. The sandbars and points 
of islands gave way, swallowed up in the tumultuous bosom of the 
river, carrying down with them the Cottonwood trees cracking and 
crashing, tossing their arms to and fro, as if sensible of their danger, 
while they disappeared beneath the flood. The river which the day be- 
fore was comparatively clear, being low, now changed to a reddish 
hue and became thick with mud thrown from the bottom, while the sur- 
face, lashed violently by the agitation of the earth beneath, was covered 
with foam, which gathering in masses the size of a barrel, floated along 
on the trembling surface. The earth on the shores opened in wide 
fissures closing again, and water and sand and mud in huge jets were 
thrown higher than the tree tops. The atmosphere was filled with a 
thick vapor or gas to which the light imparted a purple tinge resem- 
bling but different from Indian summer or smoke. From the check giv- 
en to the current by the heaving bottom the river rose in a few min- 
utes five or six feet and again rushed forward with redoubled impet- 
uosity hurrying -along the boats, now let loose by the horror stricken 
boatmen, as in less danger on the water than on the land. Many boats 
were overwhelmed in this manner and their crews perished with them. 
It required the utmost exertion to keep the boats in the middle of the 
river. Many boats were wrecked and old snags thrown up from where 
they had reisted for ages. A man belonging to one of the boats re- 
mained for several hours on the upright trunk of an old snag in the 
middle of the river against which his boat was wrecked, but was finally 
rescued. The sulphurous gases discharged during the shocks tainted 
the air, and the river water for 150 miles below could not be used for 
a number of days. New Madrid which stood 15 to 20 feet above the 
summer flood sank so below that the next rise covered it 5 feet. The 
neighboring lakes became dry land and have since been planted in corn. 
The stone and brick buildings at Cape Girardeau were cracked. Near 
St. Louis fowls fell from the trees as if dead : crockery fell from 
shelves. 
John Bradbury, the EngHsh explorer, was on a keel boat 
parsing clown the river. On the night of the 15th his boat 
was moored to a small island near Little Prairie. He observed 
the shock about two o'clock. Tn half an hour another shock 
came. This made a chasm in the island 4 feet wide and 80 
yards long. Air. Bradbury observed that the sound seemed 
to precede the earthciuake at least a second and that it always 
