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.
The naturalist, Audubon, felt the earthquake in Kentucky and wrote an account of it in his journal.
The shocks were most severe over a distance of about one hundred miles from Cairo to Memphis and over a width of about fifty miles. They were felt at St. Louis and New Orleans, Detroit, Washington, and Boston. They were undoubtedly felt as far up the great river as St. Paul and Minneapolis, but that region was at the time still an unsettled Indian country.
Although the earthquake was one of the most severe in the United States, few lives were lost. The country around New Madrid was at that time thinly settled and most of the houses were small and built of wood. It is, however, not surprising that many settlers left the country, for the shocks continued from time to time until the early part of May, 1812.
Below Cairo the mighty river becomes still mightier and winds with countless curves and bends this way and that way through rich lowlands from ten to forty miles wide. On a stretch of three hundred and fifty miles, twice as far by river, only three large cities, Cairo, Memphis and Vicksburg, offer large and convenient ports. Very often the great river does not touch the high land for a hundred miles or more, but glides along through endless marshes and through forests of oak, elm, sycamore, walnut, gum, cypress, and other Southern trees, while numberless bayous, tributaries, and oxbow lakes give variety to the vast flood-plain of swamp and forest. Where the land is high or protected by dikes, rich plantations have been cleared, but many hundreds of square miles are subject to overflow and remain wild to this day.