bmerged during the
earthquake of 1811-12. It is said to extend along the course of the
White Water and its tributaries for a distance of between 70 and 80
miles north and south, and 30 miles east and west. I saw on its borders
many full-grown trees still standing leafless, the bottoms of their
trunks several feet under water, and a still greater number lying
prostrate. An active vegetation of aquatic plants is already beginning
to fill up some of the shallows, and the sediment washed in by
occasional floods when the Mississippi rises to an extraordinary height
contributes to convert the sunk region into marsh and forest land. Even
on the dry ground along the confines of the submerged area, I observed
in some places that all the trees of prior date to 1811 were dead and
leafless, though standing erect and entire. They are supposed to have
been killed by the loosening of their roots during the repeated
undulations which passed through the ground for three months in
succession.

Mr. Bringier, an experienced engineer of New Orleans, who was on
horseback near New Madrid when some of the severest shocks were
experienced, related to me (in 1846), that "as the waves advanced the
trees bent down, and the instant afterwards, while recovering their
position, they often met those of other trees similarly inclined, so
that their branches becoming interlocked, they were prevented from
righting themselves again. The transit of the wave through the woods was
marked by the crashing noise of countless boughs, first heard on one
side and then on the other. At the same time powerful jets of water,
mixed with sand, mud, and fragments of coaly matter, were cast up,
endangering the lives of both horse and rider."

I was curious, to ascertain whether any vestiges still remained of these
fountains of mud and water, and carefully examined between New Madrid
and the Little Prairie several "sink holes," as they are termed. They
consist of cavities from 10 to 30 yards in width, and 20 feet or more in
depth, and are very conspicuous, interrupting the level surface of a
flat alluvial plain. I saw abundance of sand, which some of the present
inhabitants saw spouting from these deep holes, also fragments of
decayed wood and black bituminous shale, probably drifted down at some
former period in the main channel of the Mississippi, from the
coal-fields farther north. I also found numerous rents in the soil left
by the earthquake, some of them still sev