Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/220

202, are produced, as before stated, p. 129, in all great alluvial plains, where the river shifts its position, and where marshes, ponds, and lakes are formed in its old deserted channels. In this part of America, however, it may have happened that some of these lakes were caused by partial subsidences, such as were witnessed, during the earthquakes of 1811–12, around New Madrid, in the valley of the Mississippi.

Owing to the destructible nature of the yellow loam, d e, fig. 26, every streamlet flowing over the platform has cut for itself, in its way to the Mississippi, a deep gully or ravine; and this erosion has of late years, especially since 1812, proceeded with accelerated speed, ascribable in some degree to the partial clearing of the native forest, but partly also to the effects of the earthquake of 1811–12. By that convulsion the region around Natchez was rudely shaken and much fissured. One of the narrow valleys near Natchez, due to this fissuring, is now called the Mammoth Ravine. Though no less than seven miles long, and in some parts sixty feet deep, I was assured by a resident proprietor, Colonel Wiley, that it had no existence before 1812. With its numerous ramifications, it is said to have been entirely formed since the earthquake at New Madrid. Before that event, Colonel Wiley had ploughed some of the land exactly over a spot now traversed by part of this water-course.

I satisfied myself that the ravine had been considerably enlarged and lengthened a short time before my visit, and it was then freshly undermined and undergoing constant waste. From a clayey deposit immediately below the yellow loam, bones of the Mastodon ohioticus, a species of megalonyx, bones of the genera Equus, Bos, and others, some of extinct and others presumed to be of living species, had been detached, and had fallen to the base of the cliffs. Mingled with the rest, the pelvic bone of a man, os innominatum,