REELFOOT LAKE.

The physical history of Reelfoot Lake, of night-rider fame, is not without a certain interest of its own. The lake came into existence as the result of a series of earthquakes, which began in December, 1811, and continued until June, 1812.

Some authorities say that the earthquakes merely heaved up a great ridge of land across the path of the Reelfoot River, which runs into the Mississippi, and that this dam caused the water to back up and broaden out and form a lake; but the favorite account in the neighborhood is to the effect that the ground sank, springs were opened up, neighboring creeks diverted from their course, and the overflowing water of the Mississippi rushed in during the flood season of the spring of 1812.

It is said that for an hour and a half the waters of the Mississippi flowed up-hill while filling up the depression caused by the earthquakes. Both accounts likely have this much of truth in them that the entire configuration of the ground was changed by the earthquakes. Big Lake, west of the Mississippi, in Arkansas, is said to have been formed in the same way at the same time.

Reelfoot Lake is sixteen or eighteen miles long, very irregular in shape, and covers from 35,000 to 40,000 acres of land. It varies in width from a mile in some places to four or five miles in others. The northern end is extended by a series of sloughs and bayous into Kentucky.

The most distinctive feature of the lake's appearance, the feature which first impresses and stays longest with the observer's fancy, is a certain grotesque effect, as if a set of crazy men had been operating a pile-driver there for the last century, for the trunks, stumps, and stark branches of dead trees stick out of it everywhere in desolate parody of some such human handiwork; far below the surface the fish dart among the boles and branches where the squirrels frolicked a hundred years ago.

There are beautiful spots here and there, but the effect, as a whole, is not beautiful; at its best, when the mist rises and myriad protruding tree trunks are white and ghostly in the moonlight, it is weird; the general remembrance is of something uncouth. It is a kind of sloven lake that has preferred to sit down with its hair uncombed all day long, but at night it does manage to achieve a touch of wizard dignity.