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Show 1836- 1837J Fogg's Far West 63 wave of the beautiful river. 16 Many events, we are told, united to render this year a most remarkable era in the annals of Western history. 17 The spring- freshet of the rivers buried the whole valley from Pittsburgh to New- Orleans [ 33] in a flood; and when the waters subsided unparalleled sickness and mortality ensued. A mysterious spirit of restlessness possessed the denizens of the Northern forests, and in myriads they migrated towards the South and West. The magnificent comet of the year, seeming, indeed, to verify the terrors of superstition, and to " shake from its horrid hair pestilence and war," all that summer was beheld blazing along the midnight sky, and shedding its lurid twilight over forest and stream; and when the leaves of autumn began to rustle to the ground, the whole vast Valley of the Mississippi rocked and vibrated in earthquake- convulsion! forests bowed their heads; islands disappeared from their sites, and new one's rose; immense lakes and hills were formed; the graveyard gave up its sheeted and ghastly tenants; huge relics of the mastodon and megalonyx, which for ages had slumbered in the bosom of earth, were heaved up to the sunlight; the blue lightning streamed and the thunder muttered along the leaden sky, and, amid all the elemental war, the mighty current of the " Father of Waters " for hours rolled back its heaped- up floods towards its source! All this was the prologue to that mighty drama of Change which, from that period to the present, has been sweeping over the Western Valley; it was the fearful welcome- home to that all- powerful agent which has revolutionized the character of M For an account of the first steamboat on the Ohio, see Flint's Letters, in our volume ix, p. 154, note 76.- ED. " Latrobe.- FLAOG. Comment by Ed. Charles J. Latrobe ( 1802- 75) visited *>* United States in 1* 3** 33- His Gambles • » North America m 1831- 3 ( New York, 1835) and Rambles m Mexico ( New York and London, 1836) have much value in the history of Western travel. |