These concussions are felt through a great extent of country, from the settlements on Red river and the Washita to the falls of Ohio, and from the mouth of the Missouri to New Orleans. Their great extent, and the very considerable degree of violence with which they affect not only a large portion of the valley of the Mississippi, but of the adjacent hilly and mountainous country, appear to us most clearly to indicate that they are produced by causes far more efficient and deep-seated than "the decomposition of beds of lignite or wood-coal situated near the level of the river, and filled with pyrites," according to the suggestion of Mr. Nuttall.[76] It has been repeatedly asserted, that volcanic appearances exist in the mountainous country between Cape Girardeau and the hot springs of the Washita, particularly at the latter place; but our observation has not tended to confirm these accounts; and Hunter and Dunbar, who spent some time at the hot springs, confidently deny the existence of any such appearances in that quarter. Reports have been often circulated, principally on the authority of hunters, of explosions, subterraneous fires, blowings and bellowings of the mountains, and many other singular phenomena, said to exist on the Little Missouri of Washita, and other parts of the region of the hot springs; but it is easy to see that the combustion of a coal-bed, or some other affair of equal insignificance, may have afforded all the foundation on which these reports ever rested. But though no traces of existing or of extinct volcanoes should be found in any part of the country affected by these earthquakes, it is not therefore necessary to go in search of some cause unlike those which in {186} other parts of the earth are believed to produce similar effects. On the morning following the earthquake above mentioned, a fall of snow commenced, and continued during the day; towards evening it fell mixed with hail and rain, and covered the ground to the depth of about six inches.