Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/291

 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 231 refuge of the buffalo in this section of the country. This island was divided b.y a small stream which connected the St. Francois with Varner's river. It was on this stream that there was located the Indian village of Chil- litecaux. Five miles south of this village there was another permanent bayou known as Buffalo creek, which finally emptied into Little river. On the 17th of Februaiy, 1815, Congress passed an act for the relief of persons who had sustained losses of real property. This number are yet in tents. No doubt volcanoes in the mountains of the west which have been extinguished for ages are now reopened. ' ' (Goodspeed, History of Southeast Missouri.) While Long was at Cape Girardeau in 1819 he says: "On the 9th at 4 p. m. a shock of earthquake was felt; the agitation was such as to cause considerable motion of furniture and other loose articles in the room where we were sitting. Several others occurred dur- ing our stay at the Cape, but they all hap- pened at night and were all of short duration. Shakes, as these concussions are called by the inhabitants, are in this part of the country extremely frequent and are spoken of as mat- ters of every day occurrence. It is said of some passengers on a steamboat who went on shore at New Madrid and were in one of the houses of the town looking at a collection of books, they felt the house so violently shaken that they were scarce able to stand upon their feet. Some consternation was of course felt, and as several of the persons were ladies, much terror was expressed. ' Don 't be alarmed, ' said the lady of the house, 'it is nothing but an earthquake.' Several houses in and about Cape Girardeau have frequently been shaken down, forests have been overthrown and other act provided that any person owning lauds in New Madi'id county on 10th day of Novem- ber, 1812, and whose lands were materially in- jured by the earthquake, might locate a like ciuantity on any public lands of the territory, no location, however, to embrace more than 640 acres. The provisions of this act led to the cele- brated New jNIadrid claims. Locations were made on some of the most fertile lands in the state in Boone, Howard, Saline and other counties. Many of the claims were filed by persons who had no right to them and who considerable changes produced by their agency. These concussions are felt through a great extent of country, from the settlements on Red river to the fall of the Ohio and from the mouth of the Missouri to New Orleans. Their extent and very considerable degree of violence with which they affect not only large portions of the valley of the Mississippi, but the adjacent hilly country, appear to us to be caused by causes far more efficient and deep seated than the decomposition of beds of lig- nite or wood coal situated near the bed of the river and filled with pyrites, according to the suggestion of Mr. Nuttall." (Long, Expedition, p. 88.) In speaking of Point Pleasant, Nuttall sa3-s : ' ' This place and several islands below were greatly convulsed by the earthquake and have in consequence been abandoned. I was shown a considerable chasm still far from being filled up, from whence the water of the river, as they say, rushed in an elevated column." He says, also: "In the evening we arrived at the remains of the settlement called Little Prairie, where there is now only a single house, all the rest, together with their founda- tions, having been swept away by the river soon after the convulsions of the earthquake,