North Bend on the Ohio River, fifteen miles from Cincinnati, was the
home of General William Henry Harrison, and upon a commanding hill is
his tomb, a modest structure of brick. The family mansion built in
1814, to which he brought his bride, is still preserved, and in it
were born his son John Scott Harrison and his grandson, President
Benjamin Harrison. To the westward the Great Miami River flows in at
the boundary between Ohio and Indiana. Some distance farther down, at
Carrolton, is the mouth of the Kentucky River, which named the "Blue
Grass State," a beautiful stream, having upon its banks, sixty miles
south of the Ohio, the Kentucky capital, Frankfort. The name of this
river comes from the Iroquois word _Kentake_, meaning "among the
meadows," in allusion to a large and almost treeless tract in the
southern part of the State from which the river flows, called by the
pioneers "the Barrens." To this region first came the famous hunter
Daniel Boone, who had been born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in
1735, but went in early life to North Carolina. In 1769, being of a
roving disposition, he crossed the mountains with five companions and
penetrated the forests of Kentucky, the first white men who trod them.
He was captured by the Indians, but escaped, returning to North
Carolina after wandering and hunting through Kentucky over a year. He
finally moved with some others, all taking their families, into
Kentucky in 1773, settling on the upper Kentucky River, and building a
defensive fort there at Boonesborough in 1775. The Indians repeatedly
attacked the place and were repulsed, but finally, in 1778, they
captured Boone, taking him northward to Detroit. Again he escaped,
returning later in the year, having another combat with the Indians at
his fort and defeating them. For seventeen years afterwards he hunted
in Kentucky, and his name and exploits became a household word; but
there was a large migration into the region from Virginia and
elsewhere, and the increased population was crowding the old hunter
too much, so he went west in 1795 to Missouri, settling beyond St.
Louis. He had received large land grants in both States, and had
various legal conflicts, losing much of his property, but he lived in
Missouri the remainder of his life, dying there on his farm in 1820 at
the age of eighty-five. Being the founder of Kentucky, that State in
1845, as the result of a popular movement, brought back the remains of
the old hunter, and they were interred near Frankfort, alongside the
river he loved so well.
The Ohio River flows westward past Madison, a thriving manufacturing
town on the Indiana bank, and then sweeps around a grand curve to the
south in its approach to the Kentucky metropolis, Louisville. The view
of Louisville and Jeffersonville, opposite in Indiana, is very fine,
as the visitor comes towards them down the river. The Ohio is a mile
wide, and the Kentucky hills which lined it above, here recede from
the bank, and do not come out to it again for twenty miles, leaving
an almost level plain several miles in width, and elevated some
distance above the water, upon which Louisville is built, spreading
along the shore for eight miles in a graceful crescent. The rapids at
the lower end of the city cover the whole width of the river, and go
down twenty-six feet in two miles, making a series of foaming cascades
in ordinary stages of water, but being almost entirely obliterated in
times of freshet, when the steamboats can pass down them. A long canal
cut through the rocks provides safe navigation around them. An
expedition of thirteen families of Virginia, under Colonel George
Rogers Clarke, floated down the Ohio on flatboats in 1778, and halting
at the falls, settled there, at first on an island, but afterwards on
the southern shore. This began the town which in 1780 was named by the
Virginia Legislature in honor of the French King Louis XVI., who was
then actively aiding the American Revolution. The Ohio River
steamboating began the city's rapid growth, which was further swelled
by the later development of railway traffic, and it now has two
hundred and fifty thousand population. There is a large southern trade
in provisions and supplies, and it is probably the greatest
leaf-tobacco market in the world, being also the distributing depot
for the Kentucky whiskies. There are, besides, other prominent
branches of manufacture. Its foliage-lined and lawn-bordered streets
in the residential section are very attractive and a notable feature.
The chief public buildings are the Court House and the City Hall, the
former adorned by a statue of the Kentucky statesman Henry Clay. Its
great disaster was a frightful tornado, which swept a path of
desolation through the heart of the city in March, 1900, killing
seventy-six persons and destroying property estimated at $3,000,000.
Its most famous citizen was George D. Prentice, poet, editor and
politician, whose monument, a Grecian canopy of marble, is in Cave
Hill Cemetery, prettily laid out on the hills to the eastward. The
city has an environment of pleasant parks, and three fine bridges span
the Ohio in front, crossing to the suburban towns of Jeffersonville
and New Albany over on the Indiana shore. Five miles east of
Louisville lived General Zachary Taylor, old "Rough and Ready," who
commanded the army of the United States in the conquest of Mexico, and
died while President in 1850. He is buried near his old home.