“They hardly recognized the river. It was full of landslides, trees, and all kinds of debris, and one good-sized island and its tow-head had entirely disappeared. They found the town of New Madrid in ruins. The land had sunk ten feet or more. About thirty boats in the harbor had been wrecked or carried down stream.. One large barge loaded with five hundred barrels of flour was split from stern to bow and left high and dry on the bank.
“The people had all fled and were camping on high land away from the river.”
The old man paused as if for breath.
“Did the people ever go back?” asked Tim.
“No, they didn’t. The fact is they couldn’t. The river washed the whole town away. The present town is built a little farther up the river.
“The whole country, my father said, was changed by the earthquake. Many good farms sank and many others were covered with sand. Where the lake is now, Bayou de Chien and Reelfoot Creek used to run through a dense forest of cypress trees. You can follow their channels in your bark boat, because there are no stumps or dead trees in the old channels.
“Some of our neighbors were so frightened that they moved away. Father was also going to leave. He was going into Arkansas, but mother would not move. She said she had traveled in an ox-wagon from Pennsylvania to Indiana and from Indiana to Tennessee and that was enough. If the end of the world was coming, Arkansas wouldn’t last any longer than Tennessee.”
Thus ran the story of the old farmer of Reelfoot Lake. He spoke in a quaint Southern dialect, in which Bill and Tim were quite at home, but which compelled Barker to pay very close attention, while Tatanka lost most of the tale.
The story of the old pioneer has been corroborated by the testimony of many reliable men.
At the time of this great catastrophe, Captain Nicholas Roosevelt was taking the pioneer steamer New Orleans from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. The steamer was on the Ohio when the earthquake occurred, but when the boat reached the Mississippi, the pilot became much alarmed and said he was lost. The shores had changed and large islands had disappeared.