“This cane,” said Tatanka, after they had eaten their supper, “is like the pipe-stem reeds of the Sioux Country. The Indian boys called them spear-grass, and we threw the reeds at each other when we played war.”
The campers remained a week on Reelfoot Lake, and they still found much evidence of the great earthquake half a century before.
The great cracks in the earth, formed at that time, could still be seen in many places. Some of the fissures were filled with sand, which had come up from below; in others, young trees had grown up, while many of the old trees, still alive, were leaning over the partly filled fissures.
It was a strange lake indeed on which the travelers found themselves. Most of the lake, about ten miles long and two miles wide, was covered with water-lilies, lotus, and many other kinds of water plants. Along the margin and on half a dozen low islands grew the sombre cypress, its odd, fantastic, knee-like roots projecting above the water. On the higher lands also, many trees not growing on the upper river had appeared. Sycamores, or buttonwood, mulberry, gum-trees, and catalpas.
The campers met an old man, who had lived near Reelfoot all his life and who told many stories of the great earthquake.
“I was born the year of the earthquake,” the old man related, “and my father told me many stories about it.
“The first shock came a little after midnight on December 16th. My father and two other men were on the river at the time. They were going to New Madrid and were going to start very early, so they could return the same day. Their boat was tied near a very big sycamore. All at once they heard a great thundering underground. The big tree began to sway like the tow-head willows in the storm. Then the whole bank broke loose and crashed into the river. First the water in the river seemed to rise like a big wall, the next moment it rushed down stream with a roaring current.
“My father was thrown out of the boat and would have drowned if he had not gotten hold of the branches of the big sycamore. How he did it, he did not remember. He yelled for help, and after a long time the men came back with the boat and took him off.
“They were all so scared they couldn’t talk; they thought the world was coming to an end.