We are
sorry to find that the few strictures we were constrained
to make, week before last, on a publication in the
Western
Sky, respecting the earthquakes at this place,
previous to the 25th ultimo, should have wounded the
sensibility of the writer, who in the
Spy of the
8th inst. signs himself
“Vindex.”
We, however, see in his production no proofs whatever of
his former assertions, nor have we been able to collect
any facts which go to invalidate our won.The gentleman
compares us to those physicians, who, when the yellow
fever existed in Philadelphia and New York, denied it and
thereby prevented the flight of the inhabitants into the
country till it was too late, and hundreds were
destroyed. We do not pretend to know as much
concerning the yellow fever, or even concerning anything
else, as that gentleman; but we have always understood
that the country was exempt from that mortal disease, and
therefore, it furnished a proper asylum for the
inhabitants of the cities. But we know to a
certainty that these earthquakes have affected the country
as much as the town; and would the gentleman recommend a
removal from the latter to the former, in such a
case? If he does not mean to recommend such a
removal, his comparison between the physicians alluded to,
and ourselves, is as absurd as that they could be made
unpopular by the occurrence of the yellow fever in cities.
The gentleman has attached great consequence to what he
says was an exaggeration by the person who furnished what
was given as the
substance of a letter from the
Chickasaw Bluffs [now Memphis, Tenn.]. As the design was merely to give
substance
of that letter, the employment of the word
thousands,
millions or
billions would be equally
proper to express the impressions of the writer of that
letter.
For the number of trees which he saw rise
up from the bed of the river, was so great that he did
not pretend to count them, but compares them to a
Kentucky forest when two-thirds of the trees are cut
down. But one of the editors has since conversed
with the gentleman to whom that letter was addressed,
and was informed by him that the letter states that an “immense
number” or “innumerable” trees
rose from the bottom of the river. Now although
the word “millions” was not used, the reader
will judge whether the word millions was an
exaggeration of the expression innumerable.” And
from this mere quibble an idea may be formed of the
miserable shifts to which that writer was driven for the
foundation of criticism.
