EARTHQUAKE    OF    1811.    A    series  of   the
most  remarkable  earthquakes  in  the  history  of
the  Mississippi  Valley   began  on   the    night  of
November  16,  1811,  continuing  for  several  months
and  finally  ending  with  the  destruction  of  Carac-
cas,  Venezuela,  in  March  following.     While  the
center  of  the  earlier  disturbance  appears  to  have
been  in  the  vicinity  of  New  Madrid,  in  Southeast-
ern Missouri,  its  minor  effects  were  felt  through
a    wide    extent    of    country,    especially  in    the
settled    portions    of    Illinois.     Contemporaneous
historv  states  that,  in  the  American  Bottom,  then
the  most  densely  settled  portion  of  Illinois,  the
results  were  very  perceptible.     The  walls  of    a
brick  house   belonging  to  Mr.   Samuel    Judy,  a
pioneer  settler  in  the  eastern  edge  of  the  bottom,
near  Edwardsville,  Madison  County,  were  cracked
by  the  convulsion,  the  effects  being  seen  for  more
than  two  generations.     Gov.  John  Reynolds,  then
a  young   man  of    23,   living  with    his    father's
family  in  what  was  called  the  "Goshen  Settle-
ment," near  Edwardsville,  in  his  history  of  "My
Own  Times,'"  says  of  it:     "Our  family  were  all
sleeping  in  a  log-cabin,  and  my  father  leaped  out
of  bed,  crying  out,  'The  Indians  are  on  the  house.
