[silver_pilate]

Mercury,

Yeah, that's the one I was referring to in the end of my last reply. If my information is correct, the river actually flowed backwards for a while.

Here's a firsthand account of the earthquakes of New Madrid (Missouri) of 1811 written by Eliza Bryan. There were three major quakes which were classified as magnitude-8 earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks:

"On the 16th of December, 1811, about 2 o'clock, A.M., we were visited by a violent shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a very awful noise, resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating, which was followed in a few minutes by the complete saturation of the atmosphere, with sulphurious vapor, causing total darkness. The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, not knowing where to go or what to do, the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species, the cracking of trees falling, and the roaring of the Mississippi, the current of which was retrograde for a few minutes, owing, as is supposed, to an erruption in its bed, formed a scene truly terrible.

From that time until about sunrise a number of lighter shocks occurred, at which time one still more violent than the first took place, with the same accompaniments, and the terror which had been excited in every one, and indeed in all animal nature, was now, if possible, doubled. The inhabitants fled in every direction to the country, supposing (if it can be admitted that their minds can be exercised at all) that there was less danger at a distance from than near the river. In one person, a female, (Mrs. Lafont), the alarm was so great that she fainted, and could not be revived.

There were several shocks a day, but lighter than those already mentioned, until the 23d of January, 1812, when one occurred, as violent as the severest of the former ones, accompanied by the same phenomena as the former.

From this time until the 4th of February the earth was in a continual agitation, visibly waving as a gentle sea. On that day there was another shock, nearly as hard as the proceeding ones; next day four such, and on the 7th, about 4 o'clock A.M., a concussion took place so much more violent than those which had preceeded it, that it was denominated the hard shock. The awful darkness of the atmosphere which, as formerly, was saturated with sulphurous vapor, and the violence of the tempestuous thundering noise that accompanied it, together with all of the other phenomena mentioned as attending the former ones, formed a scene, the description of which would require the most sublimely fanciful imagination.

At first the Mississippi seemed to recede from its banks, and its water gathered up like a mountain, leaving, for a moment, many boats which were here on their way to New Orleans, on the bare sand, in which time the poor sailors made their escape from them. It then rising fifteen or twenty feet perpendicularly, and expanding, as it were, at the same moment, the bank overflowed with a retrograde current rapid as a torrent. The boats, which before had been left on the sand, were now torn from their moorings, and suddenly driven up a little creek, at the mouth of which they laid, to the distance, in some instances, of nearly a quarter of a mile. The river, falling immediately as rapidly as it had risen, receded within its banks again with such violence that it took with it whole groves of young cottonwood trees which ledged its borders...."


Crazy Stuff.

--nathan