country in a buggy. First from Frankfort to Versailles, the capital
of Woodford County; then to Lexington, where we passed a couple of
days with Major McDowell at Ashland, the old Henry Clay place; then
to Georgetown in Scott County; thence back to Frankfort again. The
following week I passed three days on the great stock farm of Colonel
Alexander, where I saw more and finer blooded stock in the way of
horses, cattle, and sheep than I had ever seen before. From thence we
went south to Colonel Shelby's, where we passed a couple of days on the
extreme edge of the blue-grass circle in Boyle County. Here we strike
the rim of sharp low hills that run quite around this garden of the
State, from the Ohio River on the west to the Ohio again on the north
and east. Kentucky is a great country for licks; there are any number
of streams and springs that bear the names of licks. Probably the soil
of no other State in the Union has been so much licked and smacked over
as that of Kentucky. Colonel Shelby's farm is near a stream called Knob
Lick, and within a few miles of a place called Blue Lick. I expected to
see some sort of salt spring where the buffalo and deer used to come
to lick; but instead of that saw a raw, naked spot of earth, an acre
or two in extent, which had apparently been licked into the shape of
a clay model of some scene in Colorado or the Rocky Mountains. There
were gullies and chasms and sharp knobs and peaks as blue and barren as
could be, and no sign of a spring or of water visible. The buffalo had
licked the clay for the saline matter it held, and had certainly made a
deep and lasting impression.
From Shelby City we went west sixty or more miles, skirting the
blue-grass region, to Lebanon Junction, where I took the train for Cave
City. The blue-grass region is as large as the State of Massachusetts,
and is, on the whole, the finest bit of the earth's surface, with the
exception of parts of England, I have yet seen. In one way it is more
pleasing than anything one sees in England, on account of the greater
sense of freedom and roominess which it gives one. Everything is on a
large, generous scale. The fields are not so cut up, nor the roadways
so narrow, nor the fences so prohibitory. Indeed, the distinguishing
feature of this country is its breadth: one sees fields of corn or
wheat or clover of from fifty to one hundred acres each. At Colonel
Alexander's I saw three fields of clover lying side by side which
contained three hundred acres: as the clover was just in full bloom,
the sight was a very pleasing one. The farms are larger, ranging from
several hundred to several thousand acres. The farmhouses are larger,
with wide doors, broad halls, high ceilings, ample grounds, and
hospitality to match. There is nothing niggardly or small in the people
or in their country. One sees none of the New York or New England
primness and trimness, but the ample, flowing Southern way of life. It
is common to see horses and cattle grazing in the grounds immediately
about the house; there is nothing but grass, and the great forest
trees, which they cannot hurt. The farmhouses rarely stand near the
highway, but are set after the English fashion from a third to half a
mile distant, amid a grove of primitive forest trees, and flanked or
backed up by the many lesser buildings that the times of slavery made
necessary. Educated gentlemen farmers are probably the rule more than
in the North. There are not so many small or so many leased farms.
The proprietors are men of means, and come the nearest to forming a
landed gentry of any class of men we have in this country. They are
not city men running a brief and rapid career on a fancy farm, but
genuine countrymen, who love the land and mean to keep it. I remember
with pleasure one rosy-faced young farmer, whose place we casually
invaded in Lincoln County. He was a graduate of Harvard University and
of the Law School, but here he was with his trousers tucked into his
boot-legs, helping to cultivate his corn, or looking after his herds
upon his broad acres. He was nearly the ideal of a simple, hearty,
educated country farmer and gentleman.
But the feature of this part of Kentucky which struck me the most
forcibly, and which is perhaps the most unique, is the immense sylvan
or woodland pastures. The forests are simply vast grassy orchards of
maple and oak, or other trees, where the herds graze and repose. They
everywhere give a look to the land as of royal parks and commons.
They are as clean as a meadow and as inviting as long, grassy vistas
and circles of cool shade can make them. All the saplings and bushy
undergrowths common to forests have been removed, leaving only the
large trees scattered here and there, which seem to protect rather than
occupy the ground. Such a look of leisure, of freedom, of amplitude, as
these forest groves give to the landscape!
What vistas, what aisles, what retreats, what depths of sunshine and
shadow! The grass is as uniform as a carpet, and grows quite up to
the boles of the trees. One peculiarity of the blue-grass is that it
takes complete possession of the soil; it suffers no rival; it is as
uniform as a fall of snow. Only one weed seems to hold its own against
it, and that is ironweed, a plant like a robust purple aster five or
six feet high. This is Kentucky's one weed, so far as I saw. It was low
and inconspicuous while I was there, but before fall it gets tall and
rank, and its masses of purple flowers make a very striking spectacle.
Through these forest glades roam the herds of cattle or horses. I
know no prettier sight than a troop of blooded mares with their colts
slowly grazing through these stately aisles, some of them in sunshine,
and some in shadow. In riding along the highway there was hardly an
hour when such a scene was not in view. Very often the great farmhouse
stands in one of these open forests and is approached by a graveled
road that winds amid the trees. At Colonel Alexander's the cottage of
his foreman, as well as many of the farm buildings and stables, stands
in a grassy forest, and the mares with their colts roam far and wide.
Sometimes when they were going for water, or were being started in for
the night, they would come charging along like the wind, and what a
pleasing sight it was to see their glossy coats glancing adown the long
sun-flecked vistas! Sometimes the more open of these forest lands are
tilled; I saw fine crops of hemp growing on them, and in one or two
cases corn. But where the land has never been under cultivation it is
remarkably smooth—one can drive with a buggy with perfect ease and
freedom anywhere through these woods. The ground is as smooth as if
it had been rolled. In Kentucky we are beyond the southern limit of
the glacial drift; there are no surface bowlders and no abrupt knolls
or gravel banks. Another feature which shows how gentle and uniform
the forces which have moulded this land have been are the beautiful
depressions which go by the ugly name of "sink-holes." They are broad
turf-lined bowls sunk in the surface here and there, and as smooth and
symmetrical as if they had been turned out by a lathe. Those about the
woodlands of Colonel Alexander were from one to two hundred feet across
and fifteen or twenty feet deep. The green turf sweeps down into them
without a break, and the great trees grow from their sides and bottoms
the same as elsewhere. They look as if they might have been carved out
by the action of whirling water, but are probably the result of the
surface water seeking a hidden channel in the underlying rock, and thus
slowly carrying away the soil with it. They all still have underground
drainage through the bottom. By reason of these depressions this part
of the State has been called "goose-nest land," their shape suggesting
the nests of immense geese. On my way southward to the Mammoth Cave,
over the formation known as the subcarboniferous, they formed the most
noticeable feature of the landscape. An immense flock of geese had
nested here, so that in places the rims of their nests touched one
another. As you near the great cave you see a mammoth depression,
nothing less than a broad, oval valley which holds entire farms,
and which has no outlet save through the bottom. In England these
depressions would be called punch-bowls; and though they know well in
Kentucky what punch is made of, and can furnish the main ingredient of
superb quality, and in quantity that would quite fill some of these
grassy basins, yet I do not know that they apply this term to them. But
in the good old times before the war, when the spirit of politics ran
much higher than now, these punch-bowls and the forests about them were
the frequent scenes of happy and convivial gatherings. Under the great
trees the political orators held forth; a whole ox would be roasted to
feed the hungry crowd, and something stronger than punch flowed freely.
One farmer showed us in our walk where Crittenden and Breckinridge had
frequently held forth, but the grass had long been growing over the
ashes where the ox had been roasted.
What a land for picnics and open-air meetings! The look of it suggested
something more large and leisurely than the stress and hurry of
our American life. What was there about it that made me think of
Walter Scott and the age of romance and chivalry? and of Robin Hood
and his adventurous band under the greenwood tree? Probably it was
those stately, open forests, with their clear, grassy vistas where a
tournament might be held, and those superb breeds of horses wandering
through them upon which it was so easy to fancy knights and ladies
riding. The land has not the mellow, time-enriched look of England; it
could not have it under our harder, fiercer climate; but it has a sense
of breadth and a roominess which one never sees in England except in
the great royal parks.
The fences are mainly posts and rails, which fall a little short of
giving the look of permanence which a hedge or a wall and dike afford.
The Kentuckians have an unhandsome way of treating their forests when
they want to get rid of them; they girdle the trees and let them
die, instead of cutting them down at once. A girdled tree dies hard;
the struggle is painful to look upon; inch by inch, leaf by leaf, it
yields, and the agony is protracted nearly through the whole season.
The land looked accursed when its noble trees were all dying or had
died, as if smitten by a plague. One hardly expected to see grass or
grain growing upon it. The girdled trees stand for years, their gaunt
skeletons blistering in the sun or blackening in the rain. Through
southern Indiana and Illinois I noticed this same lazy, ugly custom of
getting rid of the trees.
The most noticeable want of the blue-grass region is water. The streams
bore underground through the limestone rock so readily that they rarely
come to the surface. With plenty of sparkling streams and rivers like
New England, it would indeed be a land of infinite attractions. The
most unsightly feature the country afforded was the numerous shallow
basins, scooped out of the soil and filled with stagnant water, where
the flocks and herds drank. These, with the girdled trees, were about
the only things the landscape presented to which the eye did not turn
with pleasure. Yet when one does chance upon a spring, it is apt to
be a strikingly beautiful one. The limestone rock, draped with dark,
dripping moss, opens a cavernous mouth from which in most instances
a considerable stream flows. I saw three or four such springs, about
which one wanted to linger long. The largest was at Georgetown, where
a stream ten or twelve feet broad and three or four feet deep came
gliding from a cavernous cliff without a ripple. It is situated in the
very edge of the town, and could easily be made a feature singularly
attractive. As we approached its head, a little colored girl rose up
from its brink with a pail of water. I asked her name. "Venus, sir;
Venus." It was the nearest I had ever come to seeing Venus rising from
the foam.
There are three hard things in Kentucky, only one of which is to my
taste; namely, hard bread, hard beds, and hard roads. The roads are
excellent, macadamized as in England, and nearly as well kept; but that
"beat-biscuit," a sort of domestic hardtack, in the making of which the
flour or dough is beaten long and hard with the rolling-pin, is, in
my opinion, a poor substitute for Yankee bread; and those mercilessly
hard beds—the macadamizing principle is out of place there, too. It
would not be exact to call Kentucky butter bad; but with all their fine
grass and fancy stock, they do not succeed well in this article of
domestic manufacture. But Kentucky whiskey is soft, seductively so, and
I caution all travelers to beware how they suck any iced preparation
of it through a straw of a hot day; it is not half so innocent as it
tastes.
The blue-grass region has sent out, and continues to send out, the
most famous trotting horses in the world. Within a small circle not
half a dozen miles across were produced all the more celebrated
horses of the past ten years; but it has as yet done nothing of equal
excellence in the way of men. I could but ask myself why this ripe and
mellow geology, this stately and bountiful landscape, these large and
substantial homesteads, have not yet produced a crop of men to match.
Cold and sterile Massachusetts is far in the lead in this respect.
Granite seems a better nurse of genius than the lime-rock. The one
great man born in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, was not a product of this
fertile region. Henry Clay was a Virginian. The two most eminent native
blue-grass men were John C. Breckinridge and John J. Crittenden. It
seems that it takes something more than a fertile soil to produce great
men; a deep and rich human soil is much more important. Kentucky has
been too far to one side of the main current of our national life; she
has felt the influence of New England but very little; neither has
she been aroused by the stir and enterprise of the great West. Her
schoolhouses are too far apart, even in this rich section, and she
values a fast trotter or racer more than she does a fine scholar.
What gives the great fertility to the blue-grass region is the old
limestone rock, laid down in the ancient Silurian seas, which comes
to the surface over all this part of the State and makes the soil by
its disintegration. The earth's surface seems once to have bulged
up here like a great bubble, and then have been planed or ground
off by the elements. This wearing away process removed all the more
recent formations, the coal beds and the conglomerate or other rocks
beneath them, and left this ancient limestone exposed. Its continued
decay keeps up the fertility of the soil. Wheat and corn and clover
are rotated for fifty years upon the same fields without manure, and
without any falling off in their productiveness. Where the soil is
removed, the rock presents that rough, honeycombed appearance which
surfaces do that have been worm-eaten instead of worn. The tooth which
has gnawed, and is still gnawing it, is the carbonic acid carried
into the earth by rain-water. Hence, unlike the prairies of the West,
the fertility of this soil perpetually renews itself. The blue-grass
seems native to this region; any field left to itself will presently
be covered with blue-grass. It is not cut for hay, but is for grazing
alone. Fields which have been protected during the fall yield good
pasturage even in winter. And a Kentucky winter is no light affair, the
mercury often falling fifteen or twenty degrees below zero.
I saw but one new bird in Kentucky, namely, the lark finch, and but
one pair of those. This is a Western bird of the sparrow kind which
is slowly making its way eastward, having been found as far east as
Long Island. I was daily on the lookout for it, but saw none till I
was about leaving this part of the State. Near old Governor Shelby's
place in Boyle County, as we were driving along the road, my eye caught
a grayish brown bird like the skylark, but with a much more broad and
beautifully marked tail. It suggested both a lark and a sparrow, and I
knew at once it was the lark finch I had been looking for. It alighted
on some low object in a plowed field, and with a glass I had a good
view of it—a very elegant, distinguished-appearing bird for one clad
in the sparrow suit, the tail large and dark, with white markings on
the outer web of the quills. Much as I wanted to hear his voice, he
would not sing, and it was not till I reached Adams County, Illinois,
that I saw another one and heard the song. Driving about the country
here—which, by the way, reminded me more of the blue-grass region than
anything I saw outside of Kentucky—with a friend, I was again on the
lookout for the new bird, but had begun to think it was not a resident,
when I espied one on the fence by the roadside. It failed to sing,
but farther on we saw another one which alighted upon a fruit-tree
near us. We paused to look and to listen, when instantly it struck up
and gave us a good sample of its musical ability. It was both a lark
and a sparrow song; or, rather, the notes of a sparrow uttered in the
continuous and rapid manner of the skylark,—a pleasing performance,
but not meriting the praise I had heard bestowed upon it.
In Kentucky and Illinois, and probably throughout the West and
Southwest, certain birds come to the front and are conspicuous which
we see much less of in the East. The blue jay seems to be a garden
and orchard bird, and to build about dwellings as familiarly as the
robin does with us. There must be dozens of these birds in this part
of the country where there is but one in New England. And the brown
thrashers—in Illinois they were as common along the highways as song
sparrows or chippies are with us, and nearly as familiar. So also were
the turtle doves and meadowlarks. That the Western birds should be more
tame and familiar than the same species in the East is curious enough.
From the semi-domestication of so many of the English birds, when
compared with our own, we infer that the older the country, the more
the birds are changed in this respect; yet the birds of the Mississippi
Valley are less afraid of man than those of the valley of the Hudson
or the Connecticut. Is it because the homestead, with its trees and
buildings, affords the birds on the great treeless prairies their first
and almost only covert? Where could the perchers perch till trees and
fences and buildings offered? For this reason they would at once seek
the vicinity of man and become familiar with him.
In Kentucky the summer red-bird everywhere attracted my attention. Its
song is much like that of its relative the tanager, and its general
habits and manners are nearly the same.
The oriole is as common in Kentucky as in New York or New England.
One day we saw one weave into her nest unusual material. As we sat
upon the lawn in front of the cottage, we had noticed the bird just
beginning her structure, suspending it from a long, low branch of the
Kentucky coffee-tree that grew but a few feet away. I suggested to my
host that if he would take some brilliant yarn and scatter it about
upon the shrubbery, the fence, and the walks, the bird would probably
avail herself of it, and weave a novel nest. I had heard of it being
done, but had never tried it myself. The suggestion was at once acted
upon, and in a few moments a handful of zephyr yarn, crimson, orange,
green, yellow, and blue, was distributed about the grounds. As we sat
at dinner a few moments later I saw the eager bird flying up toward her
nest with one of these brilliant yarns streaming behind her. They had
caught her eye at once, and she fell to work upon them with a will; not
a bit daunted by their brilliant color, she soon had a crimson spot
there amid the green leaves. She afforded us rare amusement all the
afternoon and the next morning. How she seemed to congratulate herself
over her rare find! How vigorously she knotted those strings to her
branch and gathered the ends in and sewed them through and through
the structure, jerking them spitefully like a housewife burdened with
many cares! How savagely she would fly at her neighbor, an oriole that
had a nest just over the fence a few yards away, when she invaded
her territory! The male looked on approvingly, but did not offer to
lend a hand. There is something in the manner of the female on such
occasions, something so decisive and emphatic, that one entirely
approves of the course of the male in not meddling or offering any
suggestions. It is the wife's enterprise, and she evidently knows her
own mind so well that the husband keeps aloof, or plays the part of an
approving spectator.
The woolen yarn was ill-suited to the Kentucky climate. This fact the
bird seemed to appreciate, for she used it only in the upper part of
her nest, in attaching it to the branch and in binding and compacting
the rim, making the sides and bottom of hemp, leaving it thin and
airy, much more so than are the same nests with us. No other bird
would, perhaps, have used such brilliant material; their instincts of
concealment would have revolted, but the oriole aims more to make its
nest inaccessible than to hide it. Its position and depth insure its
safety.
The red-headed woodpecker was about the only bird of this class I saw,
and it was very common. Almost any moment, in riding along, their
conspicuous white markings as they flew from tree to tree were to be
seen festooning the woods. Yet I was told that they were far less
numerous than formerly. Governor Knott said he believed there were ten
times as many when he was a boy as now. But what beautiful thing is
there in this world that was not ten times more abundant when one was a
boy than he finds it on becoming a man? Youth is the principal factor
in the problem. If one could only have the leisure, the alertness, and
the freedom from care that he had when a boy, he would probably find
that the world had not deteriorated so much as he is apt to suspect.
The field or meadow bird, everywhere heard in Kentucky and Illinois, is
the black-throated bunting, a heavy-beaked bird the size and color of
an English sparrow, with a harsh, rasping song, which it indulges in
incessantly. Among bird-songs it is like a rather coarse weed among our
wild flowers.
I could not find the mockingbird in song, though it breeds in the
blue-grass counties. I saw only two specimens of the bird in all
my wanderings. The Virginia cardinal was common, and in places the
yellow-breasted chat was heard. Once I heard from across a broad field
a burst of bobolink melody from a score or more of throats—a flock of
the birds probably pausing on their way north. In Chicago I was told
that the Illinois bobolink had a different song from the New England
species, but I could detect no essential difference. The song of
certain birds, notably that of the bobolink, seems to vary slightly in
different localities, and also to change during a series of years. I
no longer hear the exact bobolink song which I heard in my boyhood, in
the localities where I then heard it. Not a season passes but I hear
marked departures in the songs of our birds from what appears to be the
standard song of a given species.
XIV
IN MAMMOTH CAVE
Some idea of the impression which Mammoth Cave makes upon the senses,
irrespective even of sight, may be had from the fact that blind people
go there to see it, and are greatly struck with it. I was assured
that this is a fact. The blind seem as much impressed by it as those
who have their sight. When the guide pauses at the more interesting
point, or lights the scene up with a great torch or with Bengal lights,
and points out the more striking features, the blind exclaim, "How
wonderful! how beautiful!" They can feel it if they cannot see it.
They get some idea of the spaciousness when words are uttered. The
voice goes forth in these colossal chambers like a bird. When no word
is spoken, the silence is of a kind never experienced on the surface
of the earth, it is so profound and abysmal. This, and the absolute
darkness, to a person with eyes makes him feel as if he were face to
face with the primordial nothingness. The objective universe is gone;
only the subjective remains; the sense of hearing is inverted, and
reports only the murmurs from within. The blind miss much, but much
remains to them. The great cave is not merely a spectacle to the eye;
it is a wonder to the ear, a strangeness to the smell and to the touch.
The body feels the presence of unusual conditions through every pore.
For my part, my thoughts took a decidedly sepulchral turn; I thought
of my dead and of all the dead of the earth, and said to myself, the
darkness and the silence of their last resting-place is like this; to
this we must all come at last. No vicissitudes of earth, no changes
of seasons, no sound of storm or thunder penetrate here; winter and
summer, day and night, peace or war, it is all one; a world beyond the
reach of change, because beyond the reach of life. What peace, what
repose, what desolation! The marks and relics of the Indian, which
disappear so quickly from the light of day above, are here beyond the
reach of natural change. The imprint of his moccasin in the dust might
remain undisturbed for a thousand years. At one point the guide reaches
his arm beneath the rocks that strew the floor and pulls out the
burnt ends of canes, which were used, probably, when filled with oil
or grease, by the natives to light their way into the cave doubtless
centuries ago.