“The Earthquake”

Date

3-14-1812

Newspaper

Western Spy

Page and Column

Page 2, Column 4

Newspaper Location

Cincinnati, Ohio

Serial Number

539

Abstract

Long account of damage in the New Madrid are. Also details losses from boats. Mentions waterfalls and backward flow of the river. Good account.

Transcript

THE EARTHQUAKE. Still continues to alarm the country. It is the opinion of many persons of observation that, altho' 3 months have now elapse since its commencement, there have not passed (unreadable) hours together without concussions of the earth. On the first day there happened eleven shocks and during another 24 hours 14 shocks were distinctly noticed. But the damage we ourselves have sustained from these repeated convulsions of nature, is almost too trifling to be named. Not soon the Mississippi, where effects the most alarming have been seen and felt. Accounts from various points of that quarter, tho' not perhaps, altogether correct yet preserve a tolerable agreement in their general detail. The shock experienced here and throughout the United States in the morning of the 7th Feb.was, by far, the most violent of the hundreds perceived before or since. Travellers are continually arriving from the lower country, with distressing accounts. From a number of them, with whom we have conversed, we learn that the Little Prairie (a settlement 30 miles below N. Madrid) is now from 5 to 8 feet under water; that in some places, the Mississippi, has expanded the width of its stream to between 6 & 8 miles that the town of N. Madrid, and vicinage, had settled 8 feet below its former level; that ripples and tremendous whirlpools are formed in the Mississippi so as to render its navigation almost impracticable for craft of any kind-and that in one place a cataract has been produced; that numbers of boats and lives have been lost; that a large barge from Limestone, was first cast out of the water by the morning shock of the 7th and then sunk, four persons only of the crew being saved; that a great many boats, some say exceeding 100, had brought to at or near the mouth of Ohio, afraid to proceed; and that many others which had ventured down the Mississippi, were obliged to be abandoned by the crews, after making them fast to the trees among which they were driven; and, lastly, that N. Madrid was entirely evaculated-its inhabitants fleeing in the greatest consternation, leaving their property behind to escape from the dangers of that devoted place. It is our decided opinion that the source of the earthquake ill be found either on the waters of the Missouri or those of the Arkansas, where volcanic mountains are known to exist, and there, it is presumable, the effects have already been tremendous, and many Indian towns swallowed up. We anxiously wait for the return of the traders down those streams, as from them important particulars may be expected.

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