ling and maddening affright should have scattered abroad a people whose iron firmness could have opposed no resistance to a power unseen until felt, and which opened around them yawning caverns, and spread out sheets of troubled waters on the hitherto parched earth, and made the tallest oaks tremble "like a reed shaken in the wind." Situated as the people of New Madrid were, with the great eddying father of waters on one side of them, and a dark crackling forest on the other, and no hills to flee to, they are excusable for having yielded to despair in some instances; and it was certainly in accordance with Christian hope and devotion to look for relief, in this extremity, to that Being who can enclose in the palm of his hand the convulsed elements that mark his power, and Scourge mankind!

A witness, who fixed the red eye of affright on these earthquakes in their most appalling stage, was in the midst of a forest when the first great shock was felt. He was a field sportsman, and accompanied in this hunt by a Frenchman of Little prairie. He acknowledged that the frightful scene around effectually unnerved him. When the earth was rocking beneath his feet, and the tallest trees waving, like tempest-tossed spars on the ocean, over his head, "his knees smote together" and gave away, and he found himself in the most devout attitude, imploring the Director of visible power to lend that protection no mortal could compass. The Frenchman, relying on human effort, exclaimed, with his national vivacity, "Monsieur Walkare, no time for pray! Sacre Dieu! gardez-vous les branch!" And a shower of dried limbs from a tree-top overhead disturbed his devout exercises, and they saved their lives by flight to the nearest prairie. Continuing his retreat to the nearest settlement on the bank of the Mississippi, this spectator of horrors found the whole village on the brink of despair. Here was a little cluster of men, with pale-visaged women and children holding on to their skirts, gazing with spasmodic, open-mouthed wonder at a fearful chasm in the earth, out of which issued a current of steam, with serpentlike hissings; while an old denizen was uttering exclamations of superstitious alarm, on finding that his well had been removed twenty yards farther from his cabin than it was when he sunk

the shaft. The earth had opened, and acres of alluvion had slid away, carrying the well with it. Islands in the river were sunk, land-marks on shore were removed, fences thrown down, and identity of estates was overthrown in the general sweep of the destructive besom. While danger inflicted a general paralysis on the populace of Little Prairie, a matron of more than ordinary energy bore her little brood from the environs of her habitation to the prostrate trunk of a dry tree, on which she placed them. Having ventured into her dwelling for a supply of provisions for the voyage, she invited her husband in the imperative mood to take a paddle and steer the log, while she held on the children. This precautionary arrangement seemed rational; for the heaving of the earth had piled up an alluvial barrier in the channel of the Mississippi below, that rolled back a volume of its waters, and a flood was following in the desolating track of the earthquake. The rumbling continued to rise out of the bowels of the earth, as if the fallen angels were usurping the prerogative of Jove, and sending up the thunder of hell in mockery of the magnificent artillery of heaven. Men gazed on the living images around them, distrusting their organs of vision, while the breath of their nostrils was not put out by the deadly sirocco that came hissing from the cavities beneath their feet! At length the rocking of the earth subsided by slow and hope-inspiring degrees. The mammoth powers of the Mississippi tore away the obstructions in its channel; and floating arks, carried on at the mercy of the waters, bore their reckless crews down the new-made cascade beyond the sound of subterranean thunder, and the people on shore at last sunk to repose amid the wide-spread waste of their former habitations, accepting cheerfully the compromise of pecuniary ruin for personal security.

The compiler deems the insertion of the following highly interesting communication, from the Hon. LEWIS F. LINN, very appropriate in this place, as tending to throw much additional light on the subject of this important and valuable section of the State of Missouri..

Letter from the Hon. L. F. LINN, of the Senate of the United States, relative to the obstructions to the navigation of the White, Big Black, and St. François.

"Washington City, February 1, 1836. "SIR: A petition from the people of Wayne county, Missouri, and a memorial from the legislature of the Territory of Arkansas, asking an appropriation to remove obstructions to the navigation of White, Big Black, and St. François rivers, having been referred to me for examination, are herewith returned, and with them some observations on the importance of the improvements asked for.

"It will be found, in a report made in the year 1835 by the United States geologist, that in a certain location in Washington county, Missouri, a micaceous oxyde of iron is found, yielding at least 75 per cent. of the purest and finest iron, of an indefinite amount. It exists in the form of a vein, at least 500 feet broad from east to west, and in the other direction 1900 feet, when it disappears beneath the superficial soil. It reappears, however, in parts of the adjacent country, and always in connexion with the sienitic chain of hills that rise in an isolated position amid the galiniferous secondary limestone, where the lead-mines are worked.

"This vein may be said to enlarge on the eastern side, and, strictly speaking, extends upwards of 3000 feet; but the character, then, is less metallic; the formation, however, is very ponderously impregnated with metal, most of which yields 50 per cent. of very superior iron, and it is probable, judging from analogy which experience has established, that this vein becomes richer as it descends many thousand yards towards the inferior crusts of the earth. This ferrugineous deposite must be of great antiquity, for upon an examination of the adjacent country, immense deposites of oxyde of iron, of a productive and valuable quality, arc found in a countless number of localities, together

with rich bog ore, much of which is observed in numerous fluviatile deposites, near the streams that are tributary both to Big Black and the St. François rivers. A remarkable instance of the abundance of this kind of iron ore is to be found on Castor, a branch of the St. François, where it lies in such masses as to be used, as I am informed, for building mill-dams. The superficial contents of the great vein of what is emphatically called the Iron Mountain, and which is situated near the sources of the St. François river, would, it could easily be shown, justify heavy expenditures to open communications to these ferrugineous deposites. But when we add to them the subterranean contents, which most certainly exist at depths equal to any mines that have been worked in any part of the world, and which most probably descend much lower than any generations of man we can look to will follow, we are compelled to use the term indefinite when we speak of their contents, and most confidently assert that this part of North America will one day be as celebrated for its iron-mines as Sweden now is. In the calcareo-silicious hills of the southern part of Missouri lead is found everywhere, sometimes near the surface, while in other places rich veins are discovered, dipping profoundly into the bowels of the earth, amply rewarding the labourer for his trouble and expense in following them through caves and sinuosities in the rock.* There are

* At Valle's mines, in Missouri, miners, in their search after mineral, have entered large caves or chambers in the rock, twenty or thirty feet below the surface of the earth, where was often found piled up loose earth, mixed with fragments of lead mineral, while deer, elk, and buffalo horns were scattered around, which were obviously used as rude implements in mining by some nation long since extinct. Who were they? and whither have they gone? From the Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Ocean; from the lakes of the North to the Gulf of Mexico, and everywhere over the magnificent valley of the Mississippi, are to be found traces of the power and industry of this people. The waters of oblivion have rolled over them, and but little remains of their greatness except tumuli of earth, which arrest the attention of the traveller on every side. "Amid all the revolutions of the globe, the economy of Nature has been uniform, and her laws are the only things that have resisted the general movement. The rivers and the rocks, the seas and the continents, have been changed in all their parts; but the laws which direct those changes, and the rules to which they are subject, have remained invariably the same."

also many deposites of blende ore of zinc, of copper cobalt manganese, alum, sulphur, saltpetre, sulphate of iron, arsenic, sal ammoniac in enormous masses, marbles in exquisite beauty, while crystals of radiated quartz, sulphate of barytes and of lime, glitter in the sunbeams over hill and valley. Over this extensive region Providence has scattered blessings with unbounded profusion, awaiting but the industry of man for their fullest developments. These mineral resources are, with a few exceptions, inaccessible by reason of the unimproved state of the country. These unlimited sources of wealth contribute, comparatively speaking, but little to the national prosperity; yet, it can be easily shown that a very moderate application of pecuniary means will open a permanent road to them, and establish a scene of the most prosperous human industry, where now there is nothing but a rude desert. In order more successfully to demonstrate how proper it is for Congress to advance the pecuniary means without further delay, it may be shown, that in effecting so great a purpose as the development of national resources of such magnitude, the benefit which the public lands will receive from the application of such means will far transcend the amount of the required appropriation. From the eastern flanks of the mountainous country, sometimes called the Black mountains, now better known under the appellation of Ozark, to the Mississippi, lies a great stretch of alluvial country, extending southerly to the mouth of White river, a distance of 300 or 350 miles, and of various widths. Perhaps it is 100 miles wide from the point where Big Black unites with White river, and fifty miles where the boundary-line exists between the State of Missouri and the Territory of Arkansas. This tract of country, which may be said to lie between Big Black river and White river to the west, and the Mississippi to the east, is traversed by White river from its mouth, in the Territory of Arkansas, about 180 miles, to the mouth of Big Black, which takes its rise in the county of Washington, in the State of Missouri, in the mineral district before spoken of; and, although it traverses a broken, steril mineral region, the soil on its borders is of the most productive kind.