Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/285

 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 225 ena mentioned, formed a scene the description of which required the most sublimely fanciful imagination. At first the Mississippi seemed to recede from its banks and its waters gath- ered up like a moimtaiu, leaving for a moment many boats on the bai-e sand, in which time the poor sailors made their escape from them. It was then .seen rising fifteen or twenty feet perpendicularly and expanding, as it were, at the same moment, the banks were overflowed with a retrograde current rapid as a torrent. The boats which before had been left on the sand were now torn from their moorings and suddenly driven up a creek at the mouth of which they laid, to the distance in some in- stances of nearly a quarter of a mile. The river falling as rapidly as it had risen, receded within its banks again with such violence that it took with it whole groves of young cotton- wood trees which hedged its borders. They were broken off with such regularity in some instances that persons who had not witnessed the fact would be with difficulty persuaded that it had not been the work of art. A great many fish were left on the banks, being unable to keep pace with the water; the river was covered with the wrecks of boats. In all the hard shocks mentioned the earth was horribly torn to pieces; the surface of hundreds of acres was from time to time cov- ered over, of various depths, by sand which issued from the fissures which were made in great numbers all over this country, some of which closed up immediately after they had vomited forth their sands and water; in some places, however, there was a substance some- what resembling coal or impure stone coal thrown up with the sands. It is impossible to .say what the depth of the fissures or irregular breaks were; we have reason to believe that some of them are very deep. The site of this town was evidently settled down fifteen feet. Vol. I— 1 5 and not more than half a mile below the town there does not appear to be any alteration on the bank of the river, but back from the river a short distance the numerous large ponds, or lakes, as they were called, were nearly all dried up. The beds of some of them are ele- vated above their former banks several feet, and lately it has been discovered that a lake was formed on the opposite side of the Missis- sippi river in the Indian coimtry upwards of one hundred miles in length and from one to six miles in width, of the depth of from ten to fifty feet. It has connection with the river at both ends and it is conjectured the princi- pal part of the Mississippi river will pass that way. "We were constrained by the fear of our houses falling to live twelve or eighteen months after the first shocks in little light camps made of boards; but we gradually be- came callous and returned to our houses again. Most of them who fled from the country in time of the hard shocks have returned home. We have slight shocks occasionallj^. It is seldom we are more than a week without feel- ing one and sometimes three or four in a day. There were two this winter past much harder than we have felt them for two years before. Since, they appear to be lighter, and v>'e begin to hope that ere long they will entirely cease. There is one circumstance worthy of re- mark; this country was subject to very hard thunder, but for twelve months before the earthquake there was none at all, and but very little since. Your humble servant, Eliza Bryan.* Long says that the Missouri Indians be- lieved earthquakes to be the effort of a supe- rior agency connected with the immediate operations of the Master of Life. The earth-
 * Le Sieur, in New Madrid Eeeord. October 4, 1892.