From this temporary barrier, made by the upheaval of the bottom and the sinking of the sandbars and banks, the river rose five or six feet in a few minutes; then the booming waters with redoubled fury rushed forward with resistless power and carried everything before them. Boats, with horror-struck crews, shot down the declivity "like arrows from the bow," and were overwhelmed or wrecked on snags, that had been thrown up from the bottom of the river, or were carried down in the vortexes. These shocks continued every day until December 21, and occasionally until February of the succeeding year. It was during this extensive and exciting convulsion that Reelfoot Lake, in Fulton County, made its first appearance. This great and singular body of water was formed by sand, blown out of a chasm opened by the earthquake, damming the waters of a creek, which spread over the territory and formed a lake twenty feet deep, from three fourths to two and a half miles wide, and seventeen miles long. For many years the tops of immense trees could be seen in the water by boatmen as they hunted the waterfowls or cast line for the fish with which it abounds. KENTUCKY VALOR IN 1812-1815 The young republic of the United States tried to follow the warning of Washington, "Friendship to all, entangling alliances with none." Although France had aided us in our struggle for independence, we remained neutral when war was carried on between her and England. Although it was said of our President, that he "could not be kicked into a fight," yet, when our commerce was well-nigh destroyed, our sailors taken from our vessels and forced to serve in the British navy, and our vessels fired upon by England's, we followed the policy of two of our most gifted Southern sons, Clay and Calhoun, and on June 18, 1812, again declared war against Great Britain. When the call came for volunteers to aid the regular army, although Kentucky's quota was only five thousand five hundred men, from mountains and glens, from field and farm, from bench and bar, from every walk of life, came her best blood, seven thousand strong, volunteering their services to their country's cause. When one thousand five hundred men were required to join General Hull in his expedition against the savages, in the Northwest, two thousand answered the call, only to learn, after crossing the Ohio, that Hull had cowardly surrendered his army and the whole of Michigan territory to the British, although his army numbered nearly double the enemy.