OLD STATE HOUSE, CHARLESTON.
In 1810-11-12, a series of remarkable shocks were felt throughout a large portion of the United States, but with especial force in the central Mississippi valley. The first were noticed near St. Genevieve, but the center of violence seemed to lie around New Madrid, Mo. The shocks became so sharp and frequent that Dr. Robertson was sent out to observe and record them carefully. He kept count up to five hundred, and then abandoned that portion of the work.
The phenomena were much like those of the milder type of earthquakes everywhere. Around New Madrid huge fissures opening in the earth emitted volumes of sand and gas, occasionally spouting water, or sending out bursts of flame. Some of the fissures were six hundred feet long and twenty feet wide. The sand and water was sometimes thrown as high as forty or fifty feet. During the whole period there were unusual disturbances in other regions. On the night of the most violent shocks occurred the great earthquake at Caracas, Venezuela, which destroyed so many thousands. Had the Mississippi region been a very thickly settled one, the loss of life would have been fearful. Upon the upheaval of a new island, Sabrina, in the Azores, to a height of three hundred and twenty feet, and an eruption of the St. Vincent volcano, in the Antilles, the disturbance ceased. It is not safe to assert positively that there was no connection between these phenomena; but there is little probability that there was. They serve rather to show how universal are the subterranean forces with which man must deal. The year 1811 was also marked by a storm of unusual violence, and by the appearance of a brilliant comet. But, as noticed before, efforts to establish any especial connection between such phenomena have not met with any marked success.
These earthquakes were so violent in the river itself as to almost shatter boats in mid-stream. Trees at some distance from the bank were hurled into the water with tremendous force. Flashes of fire and molten matter were thrown to great heights. The explosions seemed like a battery of artillery. Sunken logs and snags were thrown from the deep bottom of the river to a height of thirty feet above the surface. Sulphurous streams dashed from a thousand rents, leaving unfathomable fissures. Great forest trees lashed their heads together, or were snapped off by the shocks. Small islands sank to the bottom of the river. Quantities of coal and charred wood were thrown up; some lying a considerable distance from the fissures that discharged them. Many boats were lost; quite a number of people were buried under falling banks. It was undoubtedly the most violent convulsion in the history of our country. Reelfoot lake, now a noted fishing resort, we are told was formed by this earthquake.
Time would fail us to give an especial notice of the many shocks received since the country has been more widely settled. With a notice of the recent Charleston earthquake this list must be closed.
This convulsion owes its importance rather to its location than to its violence. It was felt over about one-fourth of the entire country, its greatest force being felt along the Atlantic coast from New Haven to Savannah. The area affected was elliptical, and the shock was but little less severe at Atlanta, Georgia, in East Tennessee, and many North and South Carolina regions, than in Charleston itself. It was felt at Charleston at 9:51, August 31, 1886, and reached Toronto, Canada, in four minutes. It did not travel so readily westward as northward.