eral feet wide, and a yard or
two in depth, although the action of rains, frost, and occasional
inundations, and especially the leaves of trees blown into them in
countless numbers every autumn, have done much to fill them up. I
measured the direction of some of the fissures, which usually varied
from 10 to 45 degrees W. of north, and were often parallel to each
other; I found, however, a considerable diversity in their direction.
Many of them are traceable for half a mile and upwards, but they might
easily be mistaken for artificial trenches if resident settlers were not
there to assure us that within their recollection they were "as deep as
wells." Fragments of coaly shale were strewed along the edges of some of
these open fissures, together with white sand, in the same manner as
round the "sink holes."[654]

Among other monuments of the changes wrought in 1811-12, I explored the
bed of the lake called Eulalie, near New Madrid, 300 yards long by 100
yards in width, which was suddenly drained during the earthquake. The
parallel fissures by which the waters escaped are not yet entirely
closed, and all the trees growing on its bottom were at the time of my
visit less than 34 years old. They consisted of cotton-wood, willows,
and honey-locust, and other species, differing from those clothing the
surrounding higher grounds, which are more elevated by 12 or 15 feet. On
them the hickory, the black and white oak, the gum and other trees, many
of them of ancient date, were flourishing.

_Aleutian Islands_, 1806.--In the year 1806, a new island, in the form
of a peak, with some low conical hills upon it, is said to have risen
from the sea among the Aleutian Islands, east of Kamtschatka. According
to Langsdorf,[655] it was four geographical miles in circumference; and
Von Buch infers from its magnitude, and from its not having again
subsided below the level of the sea, that it did not consist merely of
ejected matter, but of a solid rock of trachyte upheaved.[656] Another
extraordinary eruption happened in the spring of the year 1814, in the
sea near Unalaschka, in the same archipelago. A new isle was then
produced of considerable size, and with a peak three thousand feet high,
which remained standing for a year afterwards, though with somewhat
diminished height.

Although it is not improbable that earthquakes accompanying these
tremendous eruptions may have heaved up part of the bed of the sea, yet
the circumstance of the is