The earthquake of New Madrid, below St. Louis, on the Mississippi, was in 1811, and interesting as an instance of successive shocks, and almost incessant quaking of the ground for months, and at a distance from any volcano. The agitation of the earth in Missouri continued till near the time of the destruction of the city of Caracas, in South America, and then ceased. One evening, about this time, is described by the inhabitants of New Madrid as cloudless, and peculiarly brilliant. The western sky was a continual glare from vivid flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder were incessantly heard, apparently proceeding, as did the flashes, from below the horizon. Comparatively little harm was done in Missouri, but the beautiful city of Caracas, with its splendid churches and palatial homes, was made a heap of ruins, beneath which twelve thousand of its inhabitants were buried. Just how these events were related we know not. Whether the same pent-up forces that were struggling in vain to escape in the valley of the Mississippi, found vent in that distant locality, God only knows. The supposition allowed may account for the relief that came to the greatly troubled New Madrid. The evils they dreaded came but in part—enough only to suggest the greater perils they escaped. Over an extent of country three hundred miles in length fissures were opened in the ground through which mud and water were thrown, high as the tops of the trees. From the mouth of the Ohio to the St. Francis the ground rose and fell in great undulations. Lakes were formed and drained again, and the general surface so lowered that the country along the White River and its tributaries, for a distance of seventy miles, is known as “the sunk country.” Flint, the geographer, seven years after the event, noticed hundreds of chasms then closed and partially filled. They may yet, in places, be traced, having the appearance of artificial trenches. Fissures are occasionally met in different parts of the country, which extend through solid rock to a great depth. “The Rocks” at Panama, N. Y., have been elsewhere described, and furnish a profitable study. A more remarkable chasm of this kind extends from the western base of the Shawangunk Mountain, near Ellenville, Ulster County, N. Y., for about a mile to the summit. At first one can easily step across the fissure, but further up it becomes wider, till the hard vertical walls of sandstone are separated by a gorge several feet wide, and of great depth. At the top an area of a hundred acres or more is rent in every direction, the continuity of the surface being interrupted by steps of rocks, presenting abrupt walls. The gorge traced up the mountain becomes a frightful abyss, more than a hundred feet wide. Among the loose stones at the bottom large trees are growing, whose tops scarce reach half way to the edge of the precipice. Most such disruptions of rocks and mountains were doubtless caused by earthquakes at some unknown period.