en
years after the event, informs us, that a tract of many miles in extent,
near the Little Prairie, became covered with water three or four feet
deep; and when the water disappeared a stratum of sand was left in its
place. Large lakes of twenty miles in extent were formed in the course
of an hour, and others were drained. The grave-yard at New Madrid was
precipitated into the bed of the Mississippi; and it is stated that the
ground whereon the town is built, and the river-bank for fifteen miles
above, sank eight feet below their former level.[651] The neighboring
forest presented for some years afterwards "a singular scene of
confusion; the trees standing inclined in every direction, and many
having their trunks and branches broken."[652]

The inhabitants relate that the earth rose in great undulations; and
when these reached a certain fearful height, the soil burst, and vast
volumes of water, sand, and pit-coal were discharged as high as the tops
of the trees. Flint saw hundreds of these deep chasms remaining in an
alluvial soil, seven years after. The people in the country, although
inexperienced in such convulsions, had remarked that the chasms in the
earth were in a direction from S. W. to N. E.; and they accordingly
felled the tallest trees, and laying them at right angles to the chasms,
stationed themselves upon them. By this invention, when chasms opened
more than once under these trees, several persons were prevented from
being swallowed up.[653] At one period during this earthquake, the
ground not far below New Madrid swelled up so as to arrest the
Mississippi in its course, and to cause a temporary reflux of its waves.
The motion of some of the shocks is described as having been horizontal,
and of others perpendicular; and the vertical movement is said to have
been much less desolating than the horizontal.

The above account has been reprinted exactly as it appeared in former
editions of this work, compiled from the authorities which I have cited;
but having more recently (March, 1846) had an opportunity myself of
visiting the disturbed region of the Mississippi, and conversing with
many eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, I am able to confirm the truth of
those statements, and to add some remarks on the present face and
features of the country. I skirted, as was before related (p. 270), part
of the territory immediately west of New Madrid, called "the sunk
country," which was for the first time permanently su