been convulsed. The earthquakes appeared to affect very sensibly both the body and mind of human beings. In some instances, where individuals had been deprived of their usual sleep, through fear of being ingulfed in the earth, their stomachs were troubled with nausea, and sometimes even with vomiting. Others complained of debility, tremor, and pain in the knees and legs. The shocks seemed to produce effects resembling those of electricity. We have had a very wet spring, summer, and autumn, with a loaded atmosphere; and I have no doubt much impregnated with sulphureous particles. Sickness was much more prevalent last winter, spring, summer, and fall, than ever was known in this country; and, no doubt, the state of the atmosphere was the principal cause."

Nor had those subterranean tumults ceased at the close of 1813. For two shocks were felt at Russelville, on the 5th of December, one at ten o'clock in the morning, and the other four in the afternoon.

They were repeated in the Illinois Territory about the same time. Stanley Griswold, Esq. gave an account of them in a short narrative of December 18th. This was printed in the gazettes of the time. They were particularly severe at the salt works belonging to the United States; and but moderate at a short distance off. In the 16th volume of the Medical Repository, p. 304, there are other sensible observations of the same ingenious gentleman.

And on the 29th of December Mr. Hempstead, the delegate in congress from the Missouri Territory, moved for the consideration of a proposition relative to an additional judge in that quarter. He said he had been instructed by the legislature of the territory to bring the measure forward. The settlement of Arkansas, for which the new judge was asked, was situated two hundred miles from New-Madrid, where the courts were then held, and since the late earthquakes, the road had become so nearly impassable, that a circuit of three hundred miles was

required to go from one place to the other. So great a distance from the seat of justice, obviously amounted, in many cases, to a denial of the benefits of the judiciary, and called loudly upon the legislature for a remedy.

After this minute, reiterated, and, perhaps, tedious detail of facts, it will be rational to attempt some deductions. When I engaged in the task of collecting the evidence on these curious and interesting phenomena, I was in expectation that physical occurrences so immediately before our eyes and under our feet, would have qualified me to form something like a tolerable theory of earthquakes. I must own, however, that after all the information I have collected, I have not been enabled to offer a solution, by any means satisfactory to myself. But, although materials may yet be wanting for a perfect theory, it is a matter of some consolation to have assembled into one body, the phenomena of the most memorable earthquakes that ever agitated these parts of North America, and to have made a record of them for my more sagacious and fortunate successors.

1. The trembling of the earth was felt from the Atlantic Ocean to the regions far beyond the Mississippi. The accounts given by the Indians uniformly stated that the shocks had been very frequent and violent, to a great distance up the Arkansaw. They appear to have been very little felt to the north of the Potomac, and east of the Alleghany.

2. Though the commotions were of great extent, it was not possible to assign a priority to any place. Though the earthquakes were not equally violent or extensive, yet in those of the widest diffusion or circuit, there was no method of tracing a succession; on the contrary, the shocks in the most distant situations were synchronous, or nearly so. 3. Air was produced below, and extricated into the atmosphere.

4. This, when it passed through water, produced bubbles and froth, and after their extrication, formed visible vapour, obscuring the atmosphere.

5. Hot water was ejected with considerable force.

6. Coal or carbonated wood was thrown up in a similar manner, and about the same time.

7. Light, in some instances, was extricated, and from the circumstances of its appearance, may be considered, not as an accidental coincidence of the earthquake, but as a natural and necessary accompaniment. But, in most places, there was no luminous

appearance.

8. Sounds were sometimes heard, but by no means uniformly or steadily. In very many cases there was no noise at all.

9. The gas, ( 3. and 4.) the hot water, (§ 5.) and the coal, ( 6.) lead conclusively to the existence of subterranean fire; and the light (§ 7.) and sound (8.) induce the same belief.

10. But, after all, it is not very evident what kindles the flame beneath; by what means it is supported by air, and kept from extinction by water; how deep it lies; how it convulses the superincumbent strata, and communicates its tremors instantaneously, for several hundred miles. Nor am I able to explain to my satisfaction, why a certain part of the bed of the Mississippi was its focus; nor why it happened during the winter season.

I console myself, however, that the history which I have written will give valuable information to the curious on these subjects, and assist some more happy inquirer into nature, to deduce a full and adequate theory of earthquakes.

Let me, nevertheless, before I lay down my pen, request the reader to consider this paper as a sequel to the history of the earthquakes in New-England, as has it been written by the learned and ingenious Samuel Williams, LL. D. and published in the transactions of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston.

Permit me also to observe, that cotemporaneous earthquakes have agitated other regions of the globe. Terrible commotions were experienced among the Azores in 1808 and 1811; and in Venezuela and St. Vincents in 1812. I have collected the facts into distinct histories, which I intend at convenient times to offer to this society.

The favourers of the several hypotheses invented to explain the awful phenomena of earthquakes, may all find arguments to support them, in the preceding recitals. The mechanical reasoner will find the great strata of the earth falling in some places, rising in others, and agitated everywhere. The chemical expositor will discover evidence enough of subterranean fire in the coal, hot water, vapour, and air bubbles which were ejected and extricated. The electrical philosopher will deduce from the lights, the noises, and the velocity of their motions, conclusions favourable to the origin of earthquakes from electron, that subtile and universal agent. Even the believer of the conversion of metallic potassium, by rapid inflammation, into common potash in the deep recesses of the earth, will find in the salt-petrous sandstone of the western states, a better argument than any I am acquainted with, to countenance the alkaline system of earthquakes. And yet, these various expositions, plausible, in some respects, as each of them is, are deficient in that general character and universal application which ought to pervade scientific researches.

The Leading Facts relative to the Earthquakes which desolated Venesuela, in South America, in the months of March and April, 1812.

DURING the time that North America was shaken by earthquakes of greater violence than had been experienced before, the regions of the southern section of the western hemisphere, were the seat of more terrible disorders from the same cause.

have seen.

Mr. Drouet has written the most scientific history of them that I He had visited Venezuela in a military capacity, and was there when the earthquakes occurred. On his return to Guadaloupe, he published in French a description of the tremendous events that had happened where he had been. From that the materials forming the body of this essay have been extracted.

This ingenious gentleman states, that the mountains surrounding the city of Caraccas, and those forming the chain lying between it and the port of Laguira, have the appearance of extinguished volcanoes. Parcels of lava are found in abundance, as are likewise confused masses of quartz, broken granites, portions of metals which had undergone fusion, with iron and copper almost carbonized; whence, he thinks, it may be concluded that the country had long before experienced the operation of volcanic eruptions.

At the base of these mountains there is no natural disposition of the earth in horizontal layers; but the soil and stones are irregularly jumbled together. The mountain called Sylla contains more volcanic productions than any in the neighbourhood of Caraccas, and its summit is nine hundred toises (five thousand four hundred French feet) above the level of the ocean. The city and plain of Caraccas are only five hundred and