were abroad, a tall, gaunt, determined-looking backwoodsman, in buckskin
clothes and a coonskin cap, looking as if he belonged to the days of
Daniel Boone, made his way to the governor's mansion and quietly seated
himself on a stone. As Governor Clark started from the mansion after
breakfast, he was astonished to see this man of the mountains, who
quickly inquired, "Say, Mister, be you the governor?"
"Yes, my man, I am the governor. What can I do for you?"
"Well, Governor, my name is Larkin Liles, and I come up here from Lewis
County to get into the penitentiary for one year. Hed you saw anything
of Buck Parker?"
Utterly astounded, Governor Clark asked, "Who is Buck Parker?"
"Why, Buck Parker is the high sheriff of Lewis County, Kaintucky. I
thought everybody knowed that. We all call him 'Uncle Buck' Parker. He
was to come by stage and meet me here. I walked through."
While Governor Clark was eying him and trying to realize that such
unheard-of proceedings had actually happened, "Jay-bird" said anxiously,
"Say, Governor, the sheriff ain't here yit, and I don't want to lose no
time. Can't you let me into the penitentiary and tell Buck Parker whar
he can find me when he comes?"
[Illustration: "Well, Governor, my name is Larkin Liles."]
More astonished than ever, Governor Clark said, "Have you had your
breakfast, Mr. Liles?"
With a shake of the head, "Jay-bird" said that he had traveled all night
and upon reaching the city had come straight to the governor. The
governor at once took him in, gave him his breakfast, and told him to go
over to the capitol, until he could learn more about the case.
Ten hours later, the sheriff came by stage and soon found "Jay-bird" at
the governor's office. When the sheriff introduced himself to Governor
Clark, the governor immediately asked if it was a fact that this man,
condemned to a year of confinement and hard work in the penitentiary,
had trudged on foot alone all the way from Lewis County. When told it
was just as "Jay-bird" had said, the governor, in amazement, asked, "Is
the man crazy? Couldn't he have escaped?"
"Easily, and all the sheriffs, constables, and rewards could never have
caught him. No, 'Jay-bird' is not simple; he is only honest." The
governor was so interested he asked for all the details.
Then "Uncle Buck" told of the fight, the trial, and the conviction, of
how "Jay-bird" had kept his word when permitted to go to say good-by to
his loved ones, of his long life of honesty and hospitality, and of how
he had begged to come alone on foot to Frankfort, rather than as a
common, convicted felon.
With a heart heaving with emotion and eyes dim with tears, the executive
hastily affixed his name and the seal of the commonwealth to a small
piece of paper, and, handing it to Larkin Liles, said in a husky voice,
"Mr. Liles, go home to your family and kiss the little ones for me. You
shall never enter the penitentiary while Clark is governor of Kentucky."
THE "PRIDE OF THE PENNYRILE"[3]
It is eminently proper that the metropolis of "Jackson's Purchase"
should bear a name of Indian origin. Although the greater part of
Kentucky, with its fertile meadowlands, towering forests, and tangled
cane-brakes, was only the hunting ground of the red men, yet all that
territory in Kentucky and Tennessee lying between the Tennessee and
Mississippi rivers was the home of the Chickasaw Indians. This large
tribe had their main town at Chickasaw Bluffs, where Memphis now stands,
with a number of other settlements scattered throughout this seven
million acres of fertile lands.
As Kentucky was once a part of Virginia, and as the "Old Dominion" was a
British colony, this section was once claimed by Great Britain. After
the Revolutionary War, Virginia, relying on the former policy of the
mother country, that,
"They should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can,"
allowed George Rogers Clark, in recognition of his services in the
Northwest Territory, to enter several thousand acres of land, including
the present site of the capital of McCracken County.
At that time there were no white settlements in this section; but as
early as the year 1806 or 1807 there was a flatboat landing and woodyard
at the mouth of the Tennessee River, kept by a genial Irishman named Pat
Dugan. The first name given the place, and the one by which it was known
for many years, was Pekin.
On October 19, 1818, through Governor Isaac Shelby and General Andrew
Jackson, commissioners, the United States bought from the Chickasaw
Indians their tract referred to above, which in the present state of
Kentucky includes the counties of Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Fulton,
Graves, Hickman, Marshall, and McCracken.
For many years the hero of Kaskasia, Cahokia, and Vincennes had been
infirm and poor. We all remember the touching scene when the Virginia
commission presented him a sword in recognition of his great services to
the United States; the old soldier listened in gloomy silence for a
while and, finally, thrusting the sword into the ground and breaking it,
he exclaimed, "When Virginia needed a sword I found one. Now I want
bread!" By the treaty just mentioned the title of George Rogers Clark
was made clear, but as he had died a few months previous to this his
tract passed to his brother, General William Clark, of St. Louis, who
had accompanied Meriwether Lewis on the noted Lewis and Clark
Expedition.
A few years after, General William Clark came to the little town of
Pekin accompanied by an Indian chief who had become a friend of his
while on his Western trip.
In Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," he speaks of a tribe of Indians
called "Paducahs." In the "Handbook of American Indians" we find that
the "Paducahs" belonged to the warlike Comanches, this being the name
given them by the Spaniards. There is in Texas a small town of about one
thousand five hundred inhabitants, named Paducah from this tribe of
Indians.
Paducah, Kentucky, is named, not from the tribe, but from an individual
Indian. In his diary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, General William
Clark speaks more than once of the kindness shown his party by a
scattered branch of the Paducahs, and of how their chief became his
friend. Dr. Catlin tells, in speaking of the tribes of the West, of a
chief of the Mandans, Indians that often intermarried with the
Comanches, named "Paducheyeh," meaning "tall or upstanding chestnut
tree." Whether or not he was the one who became the friend of General
Clark we do not know, but when the Comanches came southward, their old
chief, called Paducah, went to St. Louis, and then came with General
Clark on a visit to the town of Pekin, where he died with fever, and was
buried near Third Street just beyond Tennessee.
A log cabin was placed around his grave, and pioneer residents have told
of a party of Indians coming from beyond the Mississippi and holding
ceremonies over Paducah's grave. These were Comanches, or to use their
tribal name, Paducahs.
Whether the individual name of the old chief who had befriended General
Clark was one of the many varied spellings of Paducah, or whether
General Clark called him by his tribal name instead, we know not. Yet
there was a real chief in recognition of whose kindness the "Pride of
the Pennyrile" was named Paducah.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] For some of the facts in this chapter, the author is indebted to Mr.
Irvin S. Cobb.
LUCY JEFFERSON LEWIS
As travelers on the waters of "La Belle Riviere" pass between the
historic town of Smithland and the unpretentious hamlet of Birdsville,
few are aware that they are within a mile or two of the grave of a
younger sister of the writer of our Magna Charta.
Though Lucy Jefferson Lewis was the sister of the man to whom we owe our
American decimal coinage system, our statute for religious freedom, our
Declaration of Independence, the University of Virginia, and the
Democratic party; though she was the wife of Dr. Charles L. Lewis,
brother of the noted Meriwether Lewis; and though she was blessed with
wealth, culture, love, and family; yet to-day she sleeps in an unmarked
grave in Livingston County.
Filled with enthusiasm for the then far West, the Lewis family, in 1808,
ten years after Livingston County was formed, moved to Kentucky,
purchased a tract of land about three miles from Smithland, and on a
lonely, rocky hill overlooking the beautiful Ohio, raised their
rooftree, and with their Virginia slaves, began a home in the
wilderness.
Some say that Dr. Lewis came with his wife, children, and servants;
others, that he did not come until eight or nine months after the family
arrived. Be that as it may, all agree that he was unsociable and moody,
and that he soon tired of his primitive abode and left, they supposed,
for his former Virginia home. All alone with her children and servants
in the Western wilds, is it any marvel that Lucy Jefferson Lewis should
sigh for the happy home of her youth?
On a lonely, rocky promontory, where she could gaze far up the river,
she would sit day after day, straining her eyes to see if there might be
a "broadhorn" coming with news from her dearly beloved Virginia. If one
was spied, a servant was at once sent out in a small boat to bring to
her the long-wished-for papers. But this rare Virginia flower did not
long survive transplantation, and in 1811 she was buried near her new
home, with only a rough stone from the hillside to mark her last resting
place.
Only a few short months afterward, there was enacted by two of her sons,
Lilburn and Isham, a most revolting tragedy. Then Lilburn died and it
is said Isham, under an assumed name, entered the volunteer army and
fell at the battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815.
The other son and three daughters left on file, in the county clerk's
office at Smithland, a writing dated August 29, 1814, conferring upon
Thomas Jefferson the power of attorney to recover certain lands for them
in Albemarle County, Virginia. They subsequently married, moved into
other states, and nothing is left to mark the homestead but a pile of
rocks. Three sunken places, overgrown with the wild wood, show the last
resting place of Lucy Jefferson Lewis, her son Lilburn, and his wife,
while the cold autumnal winds, sighing through the treetops, chant a sad
requiem above the lonely, deserted spot.
NATURAL CURIOSITIES IN KENTUCKY
Kentucky, rich in minerals, fertile soil, varied forests, and
diversified products, is also a land where Nature has been lavish with
her curiosities.
Some of the most important natural curiosities are the following: In
Boone County there is Split Hill, where a deep zigzag path of great
extent has been formed; in Breckinridge County there is Sinking Creek, a
stream so large and powerful that it drives machinery the entire year;
at a point about six miles from its source it disappears and shows no
trace for more than five miles, when it reappears and flows into the
Ohio. As early as 1847, a Mr. Huston utilized, for a mill erected on
this stream, a natural dam of rock, eight feet in height and forty feet
in width.
In Carter County there are also two smaller streams that flow for some
distance underground. In the same county, in early days, there was an
artesian well that threw up a jet, about the size of a barrel, to a
height of four feet.
Christian County contains also some sinking streams, forks of Little
River, beside Pilot Rock, which rests upon elevated ground, has a
comparatively level summit, covers about one half acre of ground, and is
about two hundred feet high. This county also contains a natural bridge,
which crosses a deep ravine with an artistic arch of sixty feet, and is
thirty feet in height.
Picturesque falls, ninety feet high, are found in Clinton County, while
"Rock House," forty feet high and about sixty feet square, is located in
Cumberland.
In Edmonson County, besides the wonderful Mammoth Cave, there is "Dismal
Rock," almost perpendicular and one hundred and sixty-three feet high.
In Grant County, for many years an object of great curiosity, was an
immense poplar tree, nine feet in diameter; it is said a man on
horseback, after it lay prostrate, could barely touch the top of the
trunk with the tips of his fingers.
A natural fortification, a circular tableland, from fifty to one hundred
and twenty-five feet high, impossible of ascent except in one place, is
an object of great interest in Hancock County.
In Jessamine County, amid awful grandeur and gloom, the Devil's Pulpit
is found, with a total elevation of three hundred feet.
In Lincoln County the Knobs, some with a base one hundred and fifty
yards in diameter, two hundred feet high, and entirely destitute of
vegetation, attract great attention.
Mantel Rock, or Natural Bridge, in Livingston County, in picturesqueness
rivals the far-famed Natural Bridge of Virginia. This rock, resting
against the hillside, is eight and three fourths feet thick and twenty
feet wide; its arch spans two hundred and twenty feet. One of the
paintings that attracted most attention in the Kentucky building at the
St. Louis World's Fair was the artistic reproduction of this picturesque
place by Mrs. Georgia McGrew Edwards.
In Lyon County, near Eddyville, 1848, several men explored a cavern for
half a mile, where a large stream of water, an underground river, was
found to be flowing.
About three miles from Benton, in Marshall County, on a high hill, there
is a lake about sixty yards in diameter, whose depth is unknown; its
waters neither rise nor fall, but stand about fifty feet above the bed
of the creek below.
In Meade County, between Salt River and Sinking Creek, are several knobs
and groves that the pioneers used as points of observation from which to
detect the movements of the Indian parties just after they crossed to
the south side of the Ohio River.
Bardstown, in Nelson County, is built on an elevation under which is a
natural tunnel, several feet in diameter, of circular form, reaching
from the eastern to the western extremity of the eminence.
Owen County has several objects of interest, among them being Point of
Rocks, about seventy-five feet high, overhanging Deep Hole, whose depth
has never been ascertained.
In Rockcastle County, Bee Cliff rears its summit three hundred and
fifty-five feet above the river; there are also a number of saltpeter
caves where large quantities of saltpeter were manufactured during the
War of 1812. The largest, called Great Saltpeter Cave, with its many
rooms, some of which cover an area of several acres, with its
subterranean river and weird grandeur, is a rival in all respects but
size to the noted Mammoth Cave of Edmonson County. The Fall Cliffs, at
some points three hundred feet in height, are unsurpassed in grandeur.
Among the places of interest in Union County there is, standing upon
level bottom land, a rock two feet thick, twenty feet wide, and fifty
feet high which, on account of its spur resembling the horn of an anvil,
is called Anvil Rock. In the same county a large flat rock, deeply
indented with impressions of the human foot of various sizes as well as
the distinct footprints of the dog is found.
In Warren County, Wolf Sink, one hundred and fifty feet wide by three
hundred feet long and in depth varying from twenty feet on the south
side to one hundred and fifty feet on the north side, is an interesting
place.
The Cumberland River in its passage through Whitley County has a
perpendicular fall of more than sixty feet, forming Cumberland Falls, a
picturesque cascade, the roar of which can be heard sometimes for more
than twelve miles both above and below the cataract. Behind the sheet of
falling water one can pass nearly across the river bed.
THE WORLD'S GREATEST NATURAL WONDER
In Edmonson County, near Green River, was discovered in 1809, by a Mr.
Hutchins, while in pursuit of a wounded bear, that matchless
subterranean palace,--the Mammoth Cave.
It consists, not of one chamber, but of many magnificent rooms, winding
avenues, towering domes, bottomless pits, picturesque cataracts, mystic
rivers, gloomy seas, and crystal lakes, on five different levels.
Geologists agree that this immense cavern was carved out of the
limestone ages ago, by both the mechanical and chemical action of the
water. Viewing the huge columns that have been formed by depositing the
almost infinitesimal amount of lime dissolved from the rock, one stands
in awe at the thought of the great span of time required for this
marvelous work.
[Illustration: A view in the Mammoth Cave.]
Here no ray of sunshine lights up the darkness; here no sound breaks the
silence; here no seasons come and go; here no living creature--save the
torpid bat, the sluggish lizard, the silent cricket, the shy rabbit-like
rat, and eyeless fish--exists.
Among the many picturesque spots in this cave are the Bridal Altar,
formed of several pillars grouped into arches; the Old Arm Chair, in
which Jenny Lind once sat and sang; the Giant's Coffin, a massive stone,
forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and nine feet thick, that fell, ages
ago, from above; Audubon Avenue; the Bat Chamber, where thousands of
bats spend the winter clinging to the ceiling, in most places smooth
and white as if made by a master hand; the Devil's Arm Chair, a large
stalagmite in which is a comfortable seat; Napoleon's Breast Works;
Lover's Leap, and Gatewood's Dining Table; Fat Man's Misery, River Hall,
and Bacon Chamber, the last looking like a part of a pork-packing house;
the Dead Sea, the Corkscrew, the Holy Sepulcher, Martha Washington's
Statue, Shelby's Dome; the rivers Lethe, Echo, and Styx; and last the
Star Chamber, sixty feet wide, seventy feet high, and four hundred feet
long. Here the guide leaves you in absolute darkness for a while, until
from his vantage ground he so illuminates the high ceiling that when you
look upward, the heavens seem studded with stars; a comet with its
blazing tail appears, clouds cross over, midnight with its utter
darkness comes, and finally day begins to dawn.
HOW REELFOOT LAKE WAS FORMED
About two o'clock in the morning of December 16, 1811, the inhabitants
of southwestern Kentucky, especially those in Fulton County, were
aroused and alarmed by a most destructive earthquake shock that shook
the Mississippi Valley throughout. It extended all along the Ohio beyond
Pittsburgh, passed the Alleghenies, and died on the far-away coast of
the Atlantic Ocean.
The first sign of the catastrophe was distant, rumbling sounds,
succeeded by continued discharges as of unnumbered pieces of artillery.
Then the earth rocked, chasms yawned, columns of coal, sand, and water
shot up, while electric flashes, shooting through the otherwise
impenetrable darkness, added horror to the scene. Twenty-seven distinct
shocks were experienced before dawn. Then shock followed shock, the land
was overshadowed by a dense, black cloud of vapor to which the light
imparted a purplish tinge, but no sunbeam penetrated the pall that
overhung all.
Lakes appeared where hills had been; elevations of land were found
instead of lakes; the land in many places, miles in extent, was sunk
below the level of the surrounding country. The current of the
Mississippi was driven upstream for several hours, on account of an
elevation in its bed; the waters boiled up in huge swells and violently
tossed the boats thereon; sandbars gave way; huge trees crashed and
disappeared in the maddening billows; the shores opened in wide
fissures, closed, and threw huge jets of water, sand, and mud high above
the treetops. The water of the river was changed to a reddish hue, thick
with mud thrown up from its bottom, while the trembling surface was
covered with huge masses of foam.
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.
For several months, at various times and places, the Kentucky troops did
special and efficient service. In January of the succeeding year,
Colonel Lewis with from seven hundred to one thousand Kentuckians,
marched against a combined force of British and Indians at Frenchtown on
the river Raisin, and drove them from the village. Three days later,
General Winchester was told that a large force of the enemy was on its
way to attack the victors. As the night was bitter cold, the precaution
of stationing pickets was neglected, and early the next morning, two
thousand British and Indians under General Proctor suddenly attacked the
camp. The Kentucky riflemen fought stubbornly for hours. Their
ammunition ran low, but still they fought. Even when summoned to
surrender they, Spartanlike, preferred death. But, being promised that
their wounded would be safely guarded and humanely treated, they laid
down their arms. History records how this promise on the part of Proctor
was not kept, how the drunken Indians burned and tomahawked the helpless
men and officers, until long afterward the rallying cry of the
Kentuckians was, "Remember the river Raisin--Raisin and Revenge."
At Fort Stephenson, one hundred and sixty men under Colonel Croghan of
Kentucky repulsed Proctor with nearly four thousand. When the idolized
General Isaac Shelby went at the head of the Kentuckians, all felt that
he would lead them to victory.
It is said that when Commodore Perry wrote, "We have met the enemy and
they are ours," after his memorable victory on Lake Erie, that one
hundred sharpshooters from Kentucky had aided in the capture.
At the battle of the Thames nearly all the American troops were
Kentuckians, and that gallant soldier, Colonel Richard M. Johnson, did
noble service in the killing of the noted Tecumseh. When Jackson,
barricaded behind cotton bales at New Orleans, defeated Pakenham with
his veteran forces, more than one fifth of the American soldiers were
Kentucky riflemen.
A TRIUMVIRATE OF ELOQUENCE
Kentuckians, past and present, have ever been distinguished for their
brilliant, persuasive oratory on the stump, at the bar, or in the forum.