Recollections
of the Last Ten Years
by Timothy Flint
[Timothy Flint travelled on the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers a few years after the Roosevelts made their pioneering trip. In the
following excerpt from his memoirs, he describes river traffic as he
observed it in about 1816, and he discusses
the increasing use of steamboats by that time. Also, he lived in New Madrid (now in Missouri) a few years after the
earthquakes, and his memoirs include what he
learned from the longtime residents there about
their experiences and what the Roosevelts would have seen as they passed by. -smv]
[In about 1816], one hundred boats have been
numbered, that landed in one day at the mouth of the Bayan,
at New Madrid. I have strolled to the point on a spring
evening, and seen them arriving in fleets. The boisterous
gaiety of the hands, the congratulations, the moving picture
of life on board the boats, in the numerous animals, large
and small, which they carry, their different loads, the
evidence of the increasing agriculture of the country above,
and more than all, the immense distances which they have
already come, and those which they have still to go,
afforded to me copious sources of meditation. You can name
no point from the numerous rivers of the Ohio and the
Mississippi, from which some of these boats have not come In
one place there are boats loaded with planks, from the pine
forests of the southwest of New York In another quarter
there are the Yankee notions of Ohio. From Kentucky, pork,
flour, whiskey, hemp, tobacco, bagging, and bale rope. From
Tennessee there are the same articles, together with great
quantities of cotton. From Missouri and Illinois, cattle and
horses, the same articles generally as from Ohio, together
with peltry and lead from Missouri. Some boats are loaded
with corn in the ear and in bulk; others with barrels of
apples and potatoes. Some have loads of cider, and
what they call "cider royal," or cider that has been
strengthened by boiling or freezing. There are dried fruits,
every kind of spirits manufactured in these regions, and in
short, the products of the ingenuity and agriculture of the
whole upper country of the west. They have come from
regions, thousands of miles apart. They have floated to a
common point of union. The surfaces of the boats cover some
acres. Dunghill fowls are fluttering over the roofs as
an invariable appendage. The chanticleer raises his piercing
note. The swine utter their cries. The cattle low. The
horses trample as in their stables. There are boats fitted
on purpose, and loaded entirely with turkeys, that having
little else to do, gobble most furiously. The hands
travel about from boat to boat, make inquiries, and
acquaintances and form alliances to yield mutual assistance
to each other, on their descent from this to New Orleans.
After an hour or two passed in this way, they spring on
shore to raise the wind in town. It is well for the people
of the village, if they do not become riotous in the course
of the evening; in which case I have often seen the most
summary and strong measures taken. About midnight the uproar
is all hushed. The fleet unites once more at Natchez, or New
Orleans, and although they live on the same river they may
perhaps never meet each other again on the earth.
Next morning at the first dawn, the bugles sound. Everything
in and about the boats, that has life is in motion. The
boats, in half an hour, are all under way. In a little while
they have all disappeared, and nothing is seen, as before
they came, but the regular current of the river. In passing
down the Mississippi, we often see a number of boats lashed
and floating together. I was once on board a fleet of eight,
that were in this way moving on together. It was a
considerable walk, to travel over the roofs of this floating
town. On board of one boat they were killing swine. In
another they had apples, cider, nuts, and dried fruit. One
of the boats was a retail or dram shop. It seems that the
object in lashing so many boats, had been to barter, and
obtain supplies These confederacies often commence in a
frolic, and end in a quarrel, in which case the aggrieved
party dissolves the partnership by unlashing, and managing,
his own boat in his own way. While this fleet of boats is
floating separately, but each carried by the same current,
nearly at the same rate, visits take place from boat to boat
in skiffs.
While I was at New Madrid, a large tinner's establishment
floated there in a boat. In it all the different articles of
tin ware were manufactured and sold by wholesale and retail.
There were three large apartments, where the different
branches of the art were carried on in this floating
manufactory. When they had mended all the tin, and vended
all that they could sell in one place, they floated on to
another. A still more extraordinary manufactory, we were
told, was floating down the Ohio, and shortly expected at
New Madrid. Aboard this were manufactured axes, scythes, and
all other iron tools of this description, and in it horses
were shod. In short it was a complete blacksmith's shop of a
higher order, and it is said that they jestingly talked of
having a trip-hammer worked by a horse power on board. I
have frequently seen in this region a dry goods shop in a
boat, with its articles very handsomely arranged on shelves.
Nor would the delicate hands of the vender have disgraced
the spruce clerk behind our city counters. It is now common
to see flat-boats worked by a bucket wheel, and a horse
power, after the fashion of steam-boat movement. Indeed,
every spring brings forth new contrivances of this sort, the
result of the farmer's meditations over his winter's fire.
* * *
The advantage of steam-boats, great as it is every where,
can no where be appreciated as in this country. The distant
points of the Ohio and Mississippi used to be separated from
New Orleans by an internal obstruction, far more formidable
in the passing than the Atlantic. If I may use a hard word,
they are now brought into juxtaposition. To feel
what an invention this is for these regions, one must have
seen and felt, as I have seen and felt, the difficulty and
danger of forcing a boat against the current of these mighty
rivers, on which a progress of ten miles in a day, is a good
one. Indeed those huge and unwieldy boats, the barges in
which a great proportion of the articles from New Orleans
used to be transported to the upper country, required twenty
or thirty hands to work them. I have seen them day after
day, on the lower portions of the Mississippi, where there
was no other way of working them up, than carrying out a
cable half a mile in length, in advance of the barge, and
fastening it to a tree. The hands on board then draw it up
to the tree. While this is transacting, another yawl, still
in advance of that, has ascended to a higher tree, and made
another cable fast to it, to be ready to be drawn upon, as
soon as the first is coiled. This is the most dangerous and
fatiguing way of all, and six miles advance in a day, is
good progress.
It is now refreshing, and imparts a feeling of energy and
power to the beholder, to see the large and beautiful
steam-boats scudding up the eddies, as though on the wing;
and when they have run out the eddy, strike the current. The
foam bursts in a sheet quite over the deck. She quivers for
a moment with the concussion; and then, as though she had
collected her energy, and vanquished her enemy, she resumes
her stately march, and mounts against the current, five or
six miles an hour. I have travelled in this waj for days
together, more than a hundred miles in a day, against the
current of the Mississippi. The difficulty of ascending,
used to be the only circumstance of a voyage that was
dreaded in the anticipation. This difficulty now disappears.
A family in Pittsburg wishes to make a social visit to a
kindred family on Red River. The trip is but two thousand
miles. They all go together; servants, baggage or "plunder,"
as the phrase is, to any amount. In twelve days they reach
the point proposed. Even the return is but a short
voyage. Surely the people of this country will have to
resist strong temptations, if they do not become a social
people.
* * *
[The area around New
Madrid] had almost expired, had been resuscitated,
and had again exhibited symptoms of languishment, a number
of times.
But up to the melancholy
period of the earthquakes, it had advanced with the slow
but certain progress of every thing that feels the
influence of American laws and habits. By these terrible
phenomena, the settlement again received a shock which
portended at first entire desertion, but from which, as
the earthquakes have lessened in frequency and violence,
it is again slowly recovering. From all the accounts,
corrected one by another, and compared with the very
imperfect narratives which were published, I infer that
the shock of these earthquakes in the immediate vicinity
of the centre of their force, must have equalled in their
terrible heavings of the earth, any thing of the kind that
has been recorded. I do not believe that the public have
ever yet had any adequate idea of the violence of the
concussions. We are accustomed to measure this by the
buildings overturned, and the mortality that results. Here
the country was thinly settled. The houses, fortunately,
were frail and of logs, the most difficult to overturn
that could be constructed. Yet, as it was, whole tracts
were plunged into the bed of the river The grave-yard at
New Madrid, with all its sleeping tenants, was
precipitated into the bend of the stream. Most of the
houses were thrown down. Large lakes of twenty miles in
extent were made in an hour. Other lakes were drained. The
whole country, to the mouth of the Ohio in one direction
and to the St Francis in the other, including a front of
three hundred miles, was convulsed to such a degree as to
create lakes and islands, the number of which is not yet
known, -- to cover a tract of many miles in extent, near
the Little Prairie, with water three or four feet deep;
and when the water disappeared, a stratum of sand of the
same thickness was left in its place. The trees
split in the midst, lashed one with another, and are still
visible over great tracts of country, inclining in every
direction and in every angle to the earth and the horizon.
They described the undulation of the earth as resembling
waves, increasing in elevation as they advanced, and when
they had attained a certain fearful height, the earth
would burst, and vast volumes of water, and sand, and
pit-coal were discharged, as high as the tops of the
trees. I have seen a hundred of these chasms, which
remained fearfully deep, although in a very tender
alluvial soil, and after a lapse of seven years. Whole
districts were covered with white sand, so as to become
uninhabitable. The water at first covered the whole
country, particularly at the Little Prairie; and it must
have been, indeed, a scene of horror, in these deep
forests and in the gloom of the darkest night, and by
wading in the water to the middle, to fly from these
concussions, which were occurring every few hours, with a
noise equally terrible to the beasts and birds, as to men.
The birds themselves lost all power and disposition to
fly, and retreated to the bosoms of men, their fellow
sufferers in this general convulsion. A few persons sunk
in these chasms, and were providentially extricated. One
person died of affright. One perished miserably on an
island, which retained its original level in the midst of
a wide lake created by the earthquake. The hat and clothes
of this man were found. A number perished, who sunk with
their boats in the river. A bursting of the earth just
below the village of New Madrid, arrested this mighty
stream in its course, and caused a reflux of its waves, by
which in a little time a great number of boats were swept
by the ascending current into the mouth of the
Bayou, carried out and left upon the dry earth, when the
accumulating waters of the river had again cleared their
current.
There was a great number
of severe shocks, but two series of concussions were
particularly terrible; far more so than the rest. And they
remark that the shocks were clearly distinguishable into
two classes; those in which the motion was horizontal, and
those in which it was perpendicular. The latter were
attended with the explosions, and the terrible mixture of
noises that preceded and accompanied the earthquakes, in a
louder degree, but were by no means so desolating and
destructive as the other. When they were felt, the houses
crumbled, the trees waved together, the ground sunk, and
all the destructive phenomena were more conspicuous. In
the interval of the earthquakes there was one evening, and
that a brilliant and cloudless one, in which the western
sky was a continued glare of vivid flashes of lightning,
and of repeated peals of subterranean thunder, seeming to
proceed as the flashes did, from below the horizon. They
remark that the night, so conspicuous for subterranean
thunder, was the same period in which the fatal
earthquakes at Carraccas, occurred, and they seem to
suppose these flashes and that event parts of the same
scene.
One result from these
terrific phenomena was very obvious. The people of this
village had been noted for their profligacy and impiety.
In the midst of these scenes of terror, all, Catholics and
Protestants, praying and profane, became of one religion,
and partook of one feeling. Two hundred people, speaking
English, French, and Spanish, crowded together, their
visages pale, the mothers embracing their children, -- as
soon as the omen that preceded the earthquakes became
visible, as soon as the air became a little obscured, as
though a sudden mist arose from the east, -- all, in their
different languages and forms, but all deeply in earnest,
betook themselves to the voice of prayer. The cattle, as
much terrified as the rational creation, crowded about the
assemblage of men, and seemed to demand protection, or
community of danger. One lady ran as far as her strength
would permit, and then fell exhausted and fainting, from
which she never recovered. The general impulse, when the
shocks commenced, was to run; and yet when they were at
the severest point of their motion, the people were thrown
on the ground at almost every step. A French gentleman
told me that in escaping from his house, the largest in
the village, he found he had left an infant behind, and he
attempted to mount up the raised piazza to recover the
child, and was thrown down a dozen times in succession.
The venerable lady in whose house we lodged, was
extricated from the ruins of her house, having lost every
thing that appertained to her establishment, which could
be broken or destroyed. The people at the Little
Prairie, who suffered most, had their settlement, -- which
consisted of a hundred families, and which was located in
a wide and very deep and fertile bottom, broken up. When I
passed it, and stopped to contemplate the traces of the
catastrophe which remained after seven years, the crevices
where the earth had burst were sufficiently manifest, and
the whole region was covered with sand to the depth of two
or three feet. The surface was red with oxided pyrites of
iron, and the sand-blows, as they were called, were
abundantly mixed with this kind of earth, and with pieces
of pit-coal. But two families remained of the whole
settlement. The object seems to have been in the
first paroxysms of alarm to escape to the hills at the
distance of twenty-five miles. The depth of the water that
covered the surface soon precluded escape.
The people without an
exception were unlettered backwoodsmen of the class least
addicted to reasoning And yet it is remarkable how
ingeniously, and conclusively they reasoned from
apprehension sharpened by fear. They remarked that the
chasms in the earth were in direction from southwest to
northeast, and they were of an extent to swallow up not
only men, but houses, "down quick into the pit." And these
chasms occurred frequently within intervals of half a
mile. They felled the tallest trees at right angles to the
chasms, and stationed themselves upon the felled trees. By
this invention all were saved. For the chasms occurred
more than once under these felled trees. Meantime their
cattle and their harvests, both here and at New Madrid,
principally perished. The people no longer dared to dwell
in houses. They passed this winter, and the succeeding one
in bark booths and camps like those of the Indians, of so
light a texture as not to expose the inhabitants to danger
in case of their being thrown down. Such numbers of laden
boats were wrecked above, and the lading driven by the
eddy into the mouth of the Bayou, at the village, which
makes the harbour, that the people were amply supplied
with every article of provision. Flour, beef, pork, bacon,
butter, cheese, apples, in short, every thing that is
carried down the river, was in such abundance, as scarcely
to be matters of sale. Many boats, that came safely into
the Bayou, were disposed of by their affrighted owners for
a trifle. For the shocks still continued every day; and
the owners, deeming the whole country below to be sunk,
were glad to return to the upper country as fast as
possible. In effect, a great many islands were sunk, new
ones raised, and the bed of the river very much changed in
every respect.
After the earthquake had
moderated in violence, the country exhibited a melancholy
aspect of chasms of sand covering the earth, of trees
thrown down or lying at an angle of forty-five degrees, or
split in the middle. The earthquakes still recurred at
short intervals, so that the people had no confidence to
rebuild good houses, or chimnies of brick. The Little
Prairie settlement was broken up. The Great Prairie
settlement, one of the most flourishing before on the west
bank of the Mississippi, was much diminished. New Madrid
again dwindled to insignificance and decay; the people
trembling in their miserable hovels at the distant and
melancholy rumbling of the approaching shocks. The general
government passed an act allowing the inhabitants of this
country to locate the same quantity of lands, that they
possessed here, in any part of the territory, where the
lands were not yet covered by any claim. These claims
passed into the hands of speculators, and were never of
any substantial benefit to the possessors. When I resided
there, this district, formerly so level, rich, and
beautiful, had the most melancholy of all aspects of decay,
the tokens of former cultivation and habitancy, which were
now mementos of desolation and desertion. Large and
beautiful orchards left uninclosed, houses uninhabited,
deep chasms in the earth, obvious at frequent intervals,
-- such was the face of the country, although the people
had for years become so accustomed to frequent and small
shocks, which did no essential injury, that the
lands were gradually rising again in value, and New Madrid
was slowly rebuilding, with frail buildings, adapted to
the apprehensions of the people.
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