Chapter VIII: Preface: To Volume III (7)

The articles manufactured at Lexinton are very passable, and the speculators are ever said to make rapid fortunes, notwithstanding the extreme scarcity of hands. This scarcity proceeds from the inhabitants giving so decided a preference to agriculture, that there are very few of them who put their children to any trade, wanting their services in the field. The following comparison will more clearly prove this scarcity of artificers in the western states: At Charleston in Carolina, and at Savannah in Georgia, a cabinet-maker, carpenter, mason, tinman, tailor, shoemaker, &c. earns two piastres a day, and cannot live for less than six per week; at New York and Philadelphia he has but one piaster, and it {125} costs him four per week. At Marietta, Lexinton and Nasheville, in Tenessea, these workmen earn from one piaster to one and a half a day, and can subsist a week with the produce of one day’s labour. Another example may tend to give an idea of the low price of provisions in the western states. The boarding-house, where I lived during my stay at Lexinton, passes for one of the best in the town, and we were profusely served at the rate of two piastres per week. I am informed that living is equally cheap in the states of New England, which comprise Connecticut, Massachusets, and New Hampshire; but the price of labour is not so high, and therefore more proportionate to the price of provisions.

Independent of those manufactories which are established in Lexinton, there are several common potteries, and one or two powder-mills, the produce of which is consumed in the country or exported to Upper Carolina and Low Louisiana. The sulphur is obtained from Philadelphia and the saltpetre is manufactured in the country; the materials are extracted from the grottos, or caverns, that are found on the declivity of lofty hills in the most mountainous part of the state. The soil there is extremely rich in nitrous particles, which is evidently due to {126} the chalky rock, at the expense of which all these excavations are formed, as well as for vegetable substances, which are casually thrust into their interior. This appears to demonstrate that the assimilation of animal matters is not absolutely necessary, even in the formation of artificial nitrous veins, to produce a higher degree of nitrification. Saltpetre of the first preparation is sold at about sixpence halfpenny per pound. Among the various samples I have seen, I never observed the least appearance of marine salt. The process that is used is as defective as their preparation of salt; I only speak relative to the extraction of the saltpetre, not having seen the powder-mills. I shall conclude by observing, that it is only in Kentucky and Tenessea that saltpetre is manufactured, and not in the Atlantic States.

The majority of the inhabitants of Lexinton trade with Kentucky;[41] they receive their merchandize from Philadelphia and Baltimore in thirty-five or forty days, including the journey of two days and a half from Limestone, where they land all the goods destined for Kentucky. The price of carriage is from seven to eight piastres per hundred weight. Seven-tenths of the manufactured articles consumed in Kentucky, as well as in the other parts of the {127} United States, are imported from England; they consist chiefly in coarse and fine jewellery, cutlery, ironmongery, and tin ware; in short, drapery, mercery, drugs, and fine earthenware, muslins, nankeens, tea, &c. are imported directly from India to the United States by the American vessels; and they get from the Carribbees coffee, and various kinds of raw sugar, as none but the poorer class of the inhabitants make use of maple sugar.

The French goods that are sent into this part of the country are reduced to a few articles in the silk line, such as taffetas, silk stockings, &c. also brandies and millstones, notwithstanding their enormous weight, and the distance from the sea ports.

From Lexinton the different kinds of merchandize are despatched into the interior of the state, and the overplus is sent by land into Tenessea. It is an easy thing for merchants to make their fortunes; in the first place, they usually have a twelvemonth’s credit from the houses at Philadelphia and Baltimore, and in the next, as there are so few, they are always able to fix in their favour the course of colonial produce, which they take in exchange for their goods: as, through the extreme scarcity of specie, most of these transactions are done by way of barter; the merchants, {128} however, use every exertion in their power to get into their possession the little specie in circulation; it is only particular articles that are sold for money, or in exchange for produce the sale of which is always certain, such as the linen of the country, or hemp. Payments in money always bear a difference of fifteen or twenty per cent to the merchant’s profits. All the specie collected in the course of trade is sent by land to Philadelphia; I have seen convoys of this kind that consisted of fifteen or twenty horses.[42] The trouble of conveyance is so great that they give the preference to Bank bills of the United States, which bear a discount of two per cent. The merchants in all parts take them, but the inhabitants of the country will not, through fear of their being forged. I must again remark, that there is not a single species of colonial produce in Kentucky, except _gensing_, that will bear the expense of carriage by land from that state to Philadelphia; as it is demonstrated that twenty-five pounds weight {129} would cost more expediting that way, even going up the Ohio, than a thousand by that river, without reckoning the passage by sea, although we have had repeated examples that the passage from New Orleans to Philadelphia or New York is sometimes as long as that from France to the United States.

The current coin in the states of Kentucky and Tennessea has the same divisions as in Virginia. They reckon six shillings to the dollar or piastre. The hundreds which nearly correspond with our halfpence, although having a forced currency, do not appear in circulation. The quarters, eighths, and sixteenths of a piastre form the small white money. As it is extremely scarce, it is supplied by a very indifferent method, but which appears necessary, and consists in cutting the dollars into pieces. As every body is entitled to make this division, there are people who do it for the sake of gain; at the same time in the retail trade the seller will generally abate in his articles for a whole dollar, than have their full worth in six or eight pieces.

I have heard from several persons very well informed, that during the last war, corn being kept up at an exorbitant rate, it was computed that the exportations from Kentucky had balanced the price {130} of the importations of English goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore, by the way of the Ohio: but since the peace, the demand for flour and salt provisions having ceased in the Caribbees, corn has fallen considerably; so that the balance of trade is wholly unfavourable to the country.

During my stay at Lexinton I frequently saw Dr. Samuel Brown, from Virginia, a physician of the college of Edinburgh, and member of the Philosophical Society, to whom several members of that society had given me letters of recommendation. A merited reputation undeniably places Dr. S. Brown in the first rank of physicians settled in that part of the country. Receiving regularly the scientific journals from London, he is always in the channel of new discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens. It is to him that they are indebted for the introduction of the cow-pox. He had at that time inoculated upward of five hundred persons in Kentucky, when they were making their first attempts in New York and Philadelphia. Dr. Brown also employs himself in collecting fossils and other natural productions, which abound in this interesting country. I have seen at his house several relics of very large unknown fish, caught in the {131} Kentucky River, and which were remarkable for their singular forms. The analysis of the mineral waters at Mud-Lick was to employ the first leisure time he had. These waters are about sixty miles from Lexinton; they are held in great esteem, and the most distinguished personages in the country were drinking them when I was in the town. The Philosophical Transactions and the Monthly Review, published at New York by Dr. Mitchel, are the periodical works wherein Dr. Brown inserts the fruit of his observation and research.[43]

I had also the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with several French gentlemen settled in that part of the country: Mr. Robert, to whom I was recommended by Mr. Marbois, jun. then in the United States; and Messrs. Duhamel and Mentelle, sons of the members of the National Institution of the same name. The two latter are settled in the environs of Lexinton; the first as a physician, and the second as a farmer. I received from them that marked attention and respect so pleasing to a foreigner at a distance from his country and his friends; in consequence of which I now feel myself happy in having this means of publicly expressing my warmest gratitude.

{132} CHAP. XV

_Departure from Lexinton.--Culture of the vine at Kentucky.--
Passage over the Kentucky and Dick Rivers.--Departure for
Nasheville.--Mulder Hill.--Passage over Green River._

I set out on the 10th of August from Lexinton to Nasheville, in the state of Tennessea; and as the establishment formed to naturalize the vine in Kentucky was but a few miles out of my road, I resolved to go and see it. There is no American but what takes the warmest interest in attempts of that kind, and several persons in the Atlantic states had spoken to me of the success which had crowned this undertaking. French wines being one of the principal articles of our commerce with the United States, I wished to be satisfied respecting the degree of prosperity which this establishment might have acquired. {133} In the mean time, from the indifferent manner which I had heard it spoken of in the country I suspected beforehand that the first attempts had not been very fortunate.

About fourteen miles from Lexinton I quitted the Hickman Ferry road, turned on my left, and strolled into the woods, so that I did not reach the vineyard till the evening, when I was handsomely received by Mr. Dufour, who superintends the business. He gave me an invitation to sleep, and spend the following day with him, which I accepted.

There reigns in the United States a public spirit that makes them greedily seize hold of every plan that tends to enrich the country by agriculture and commerce. That of rearing the vine in Kentucky was eagerly embraced. Several individuals united together, and formed a society to put it in execution, and it was decreed that a fund should be established of ten thousand dollars, divided into two hundred shares of fifty dollars each. This fund was very soon accomplished. Mr. Dufour, the chief of a small Swiss colony which seven or eight years before had settled in Kentucky, and who had proposed this undertaking, was deputed to search for a proper soil, to procure vine plants, and to do every thing he {134} might think necessary to insure success. The spot that he has chosen and cleared is on the Kentucky river, about twenty miles from Lexinton. The soil is excellent and the vineyard is planted upon the declivity of a hill exposed to the south, and the base of which is about two hundred fathoms from the river.

Mr. Dufour intended to go to France to procure the vine plants, and with that idea went to New York; but the war, or other causes that I know not, prevented his setting out, and he contented himself with collecting, in this town and Philadelphia, slips of every species that he could find in the possession of individuals that had them in their gardens. After unremitted labour he made a collection of twenty-five different sorts, which he brought to Kentucky, where he employed himself in cultivating them. However the success did not answer the expectation; only four or five various kinds survived, among which were those that he had described by the name of Burgundy and Madeira, but the former is far from being healthy. The grape generally decays before it is ripe. When I saw them the bunches were thin and poor, the berries small, and every thing announced that the vintage of 1802 would not be more {135} abundant than that of the preceding years. The Madeira vines appeared, on the contrary, to give some hopes. Out of a hundred and fifty or two hundred, there was a third loaded with very fine bunches. The whole of these vines do not occupy a space of more than six acres. They are planted and fixed with props similar to those in the environs of Paris.

Such was then the situation of this establishment, in which the stockholders concerned themselves but very little. It was again about to experience another check by the division of Mr. Dufour’s family, one part of which was on the point of setting out to the banks of the Ohio, there to form a settlement. These particulars are sufficient to give, on the pretended flourishing state of the vines in Kentucky, an idea very different to that which might be formed from the pompous account of them which appeared some months since in our public papers.

I profited by my stay with Mr. Dufour, to ask him in what part of Kentucky the numerous emigration of his countrymen had settled, which had been so much spoken of in our newspapers in 1793 and 1794. His reply was, that a great number of the Swiss had actually formed an intention to settle there; but {136} just as they were setting out, the major part had changed their mind, and that the colony was then reduced to his family and a few friends, forming, in the whole, eleven persons.

I did not set out from the vineyard till the second day after my arrival. Mr. Dufour offered, in order to shorten my journey, to conduct me through the wood where they cross the Kentucky river. I accepted his proposal, and although the distance was only four miles we took two hours to accomplish it, as we were obliged to alight either to climb up or descend the mountains, or to leap our horses over the trunks of old trees piled one upon another. The soil, as fertile as in the environs of Lexinton, will be difficult to cultivate, on account of the great inequality of the ground. Beech, nut, and oak trees, form chiefly the mass of the forests. We crossed, in the mean time, the shallows of the river, covered exclusively with beautiful palms. A great number of people in the country dread the proximity of these palms; they conceive that the down which grows on the reverse of the leaves, in spring, and which falls off in the course of the summer, brings on consumptions, by producing an irritation of the lungs, almost insensible, but continued.

{137} In this season of the year the Kentucky River is so low at Hickman Ferry that a person may ford it with the greatest ease.

I stopped a few minutes at the inn where the ferry-boat plies when the water is high, and while they were giving my horse some corn I went on the banks of the river to survey it more attentively. Its borders are formed by an enormous mass of chalky stones, remarkably peaked, about a hundred and fifty feet high, and which bear, from the bottom to the top, evident traces of the action of the waters, which have washed them away in several parts. A broad and long street, where the houses are arranged in a right line, will give an idea of the channel of this river at Hickman Ferry. It swells amazingly in spring and autumn, and its waters rise at that time, in a few days, from sixty to seventy feet.

I met, at this inn, an inhabitant of the country who lived about sixty miles farther up. This gentleman, with whom I entered into conversation, and who appeared to me to enjoy a comfortable existence, gave me strong invitations to pass a week with him at his house; and as he supposed that I was in quest of a spot to form a settlement, which is usually the intention of those who go to Kentucky, he offered {138} his services to shew me a healthy soil, wishing very much, he said, to have an inhabitant of the old country for a neighbour. It has often happened to me, in this state as well as in that of Tennessea, to refuse similar propositions by strangers whom I met at the inns or at the houses where I asked a lodging, and who invited me, after that, to spend a few days in their family.

About a mile from Kentucky I left the Danville road, and took that of Harrod’s Burgh,[44] to go to General Adair,[45] to whom Dr. Ramsey of Charleston had given me a letter of recommendation. I arrived at his house the same day. I crossed Dick’s River, which is not half so broad as the Kentucky, but is extremely pleasant at this season of the year. Its bed is uniformly hollowed out by nature, and seems cased with stone. Part of the right bank, opposite to the place where they land, discovers a beautiful rock of a chalky substance, more than two hundred and fifty feet in height. The stratum forms one continued mass, which does not present the smallest interval, and which is only distinguished by zones and parallels of a bluish cast, the colour of which contrasts with the whiteness of the towering pile. On leaving its summit, numerous furrows, hollowed {139} in the rock, very near together, and which seem to run _ad infinitum_, are seen at different heights. These furrows have visibly been formed by the current of the river, which at distant epochs had its bed at these various levels. Dick’s River, like the Kentucky, experiences, in the spring, an extraordinary increase of water. The stratum of vegetable earth which covers the rock does not appear to be more than two or three feet thick. Virginia cedars are very common there. This tree, which is fond of lofty places where the chalky substance is very near to the superficies of the soil, thrives very well; but other trees, such as the black oak, the hickery, &c. are stinted, and assume a miserable appearance.

General Adair was absent when I arrived at his plantation. His lady received me in the most obliging manner, and for five or six days that I staid with her I received every mark of attention and hospitality, as though I had been intimately acquainted with the family.

A spacious and commodious house, a number of black servants, equipages, every thing announced the opulence of the General, which it is well known is not always, in America, the appendage of those honoured with that title. His plantation is situated {140} near Harrodsburgh in the county of Mercer. Magnificent peach orchards, immense fields of Indian wheat, surround the house. The soil there is extremely fertile, which shews itself by the largeness of the blades of corn, their extraordinary height, and the abundance of the crops, that yield annually thirty or forty hundred weight of corn per acre. The mass of the surrounding forests is composed of those species of trees that are found in the better sort of land, such as the _gleditia acanthus_, _guilandina dioica_, _ulmus viscosa_, _morus-rubra_, _corylus_, _annona triloba_. In short, for several miles round the surface of the ground is flat, which is very rare in that country.

As I could not defer my travels any longer, I did not accept of Mrs. Adair’s invitation, who entreated me to stay till her husband’s return; and on the 20th of August I set out in order to continue my route toward Nasheville, very much regretting not having had it in my power to form an acquaintance with the General.

My first day’s journey was upward of twenty miles, and in the evening I put up at the house of one Hays, who keeps a kind of inn about fifty miles from Lexinton. Harrodsburgh, which I passed {141} through that day, at present consists only of about twenty houses, irregularly scattered, and built of wood. Twelve miles farther I regained, at Chaplain Fork, the road to Danville. In this space, which is uninhabited, the soil is excellent, but very unequal.

The second day I went nearly thirty miles, and stopped at an inn kept by a person of the name of Skeggs. Ten miles on this side is Mulder-Hill, a steep and lofty mountain that forms a kind of amphitheatre. From its summit the neighbouring country presents the aspect of an immense valley, covered with forests of an imperceptible extent, whence, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but a gloomy verdant space is seen, formed by the tops of the close-connected trees, and through which not the vestige of a plantation can be discerned. The profound silence that reigns in these woods, uninhabited by wild beasts, and the security of the place, forms an _ensemble_ rarely to be met with in other countries. At the summit of Mulder-Hill the road divides, to unite again a few miles farther on. I took the left, and the first plantation that I reached was that of Mr. Macmahon, formerly professor of a college in Virginia, who came very lately to reside in this part of the country, where he officiates as a clergyman.

{142} Skeggs’s inn, where I stopped after having left Mulder-Hill, was the worst station that I took from Limestone to Nasheville. It was destitute of every kind of provision, and I was obliged to sleep on the floor, wrapped up in my rug, without having been able to procure a supper. As there was no stable in this plantation, I turned my horse into a peach orchard for pasture. The fences that inclosed it were broken down, and fearing he would escape in the night, I put a bell on his neck, such as travellers carry with them when compelled to sleep in the woods. The peaches at that time were in full perfection, and I perceived that my horse had been feeding on them, from the immense quantity of kernels lying under three or four trees. This was very easy for him, as the branches, loaded with fruit, hung nearly to the ground.

About eight miles hence I forded Green River, which flows into the Ohio, after innumerable windings, and runs through a narrow valley not more than a mile in breadth. At the place where I crossed it it had not three [feet?] of water in an extent from fifteen to twenty fathoms broad; but in the spring, the only epoch when it is navigable, the water rises about eighteen feet, as may be judged by the roots of the {143} trees that adorn its banks, and which are stripped naked by the current. Beyond the river we regain the road, which for the space of two miles serpentines in that part of the valley which is on the left bank. The soil of these shallows is marshy and very fruitful, where the beech tree, among others, flourishes in great perfection. Its diameter is usually in proportion to its height, and its massy trunk sometimes rises twenty-five or thirty feet from the earth divested of a single branch. The soil occupied by these trees is considered by the inhabitants as the most difficult to clear.

{144} CHAP. XVI

_Passage over the Barrens, or Meadows.--Plantations upon the
Road.--The View they present.--Plants discovered there.--
Arrival at Nasheville._

About ten miles from Green River flows the Little Barren, a small river, from thirty to forty feet in breadth; the ground in the environs is dry and barren, and produces nothing but a few Virginia cedars, two-leaved pines, and black oaks. A little beyond this commence the Barrens, or Kentucky Meadows. I went the first day thirteen miles across these meadows, and put up at the house of Mr. Williamson, near Bears-Wallow.

In the morning, before I left the place, I wanted to give my horse some water, upon which my host directed me to a spring about a quarter of a mile from the house, where his family was supplied; I wandered {145} about for the space of two hours in search of this, when I discovered a plantation in a low and narrow valley, where I learnt that I had mistaken the path, and was obliged to return to the place from whence I came. The mistress of the house told me that she had resided in the Barrens upwards of three years, and that for eighteen months prior to my going there she had not seen an individual; that, weary of living thus isolated, her husband had been more than two months from home in quest of another spot, towards the mouth of the Ohio. Such was the pretence for this removal, which made the third since the family left Virginia. A daughter about fourteen years of age, and two children considerably younger, were all the company she had; her house, on the other hand, was stocked abundantly with vegetables and corn.

This part of the Barrens that chance occasioned me to stroll over, was precisely similar to that I had traversed the day before. I found a spring in a cavity of an orbicular form, where it took me upwards of an hour to get half a pail of water for my horse. The time that I had thus employed, that which I had lost in wandering about, added to the intense heat, obliged {146} me to shorten my route: in consequence of which I put up at Dripping Spring, about ten miles from Bears-Wallow.

On the following day, the 26th, I went twenty-eight miles, and stopped at the house of Mr. Jacob Kesly, belonging to the Dunker sect, which I discovered by his long beard. About ten miles from Dripping Spring I forded Big-Barren River, which appeared to me one third broader than Green River, the plantation of one Macfiddit, who plies a ferry-boat when the waters are high; and another, belonging to one Chapman. About three miles farther are the two oldest settlements on the road, both of them having been built upwards of fourteen years. When I was at this place, a boat laden with salt arrived from St. Genevieve, a French village situated upon the right bank of the Mississippi, about a hundred miles beyond the mouth of the Ohio.

My landlord’s house was as miserably furnished as those I had lodged at for several days preceding, and I was again obliged to sleep on the floor. The major part of the inhabitants of Kentucky have been there too short a time to make any great improvements; they have a very indifferent supply of any thing except Indian corn and forage.

{147} On the 27th of August I set off very early in the morning; and about thirteen miles from Mr. Kesley’s I crossed the line that separates the State of Tennessea from that of Kentucky. There also terminates the Barrens; and to my great satisfaction I got into the woods.[46] Nothing can be more tiresome than the doleful uniformity of these immense meadows where there is nobody to be met with; and where, except a great number of partridges, we neither see nor hear any species of living beings, and are still more isolated than in the middle of the forests.

The first plantation that I reached on entering Tennessea belonged to a person of the name of Checks, of whom I entertained a very indifferent opinion, by the conversation that he was holding with seven or eight of his neighbours, with whom he was drinking whiskey. Fearing lest I should witness some murdering scene or other, which among the inhabitants of this part of the country is frequently the end of intoxication, produced by this kind of spirits, I quickly took my leave, and put up at an inn about three miles farther off, where I found every accommodation. The late Duke of Orleans’ son lodged at this house a few years before.[47] On the {148} day following I arrived at Nasheville, after having travelled twenty-seven miles.

The Barrens, or Kentucky Meadows, comprise an extent from sixty to seventy miles in length, by sixty miles in breadth. According to the signification of this word, I conceived I should have had to cross over a naked space, sown here and there with a few plants. I was confirmed in my opinion by that which some of the country people had given me of these meadows before I reached them. They told me that in this season I should perish with heat and thirst, and that I should not find the least shade the whole of the way, as the major part of the Americans who live in the woods have not the least idea that there is any part of the country entirely open, and still less that they could inhabit it. Instead of finding a country as it had been depicted to me, I was agreeably surprised to see a beautiful meadow, where the grass was from two to three feet high. Amidst these pasture lands I discovered a great variety of plants, among which were the _gerardia flava_, or gall of the earth; the _gnaphalium dioicum_, or white plantain; and the _rudbekia purpurea_. I observed that the roots of the latter plant participated in some degree with the sharp taste of the leaves of the _spilanthus {149} oleracca_. When I crossed these meadows the flower season was over with three parts of the plants, but the time for most of the seeds to ripen was still at a great distance; nevertheless I gathered about ninety different species of them which I took with me to France.

In some parts of the meadows we observed several species of the wild vine, and in particular that called by the inhabitants _summer grapes_, the bunches are as large, and the grapes of as good a quality as those in the vineyards round Paris, with this difference, that the berries are not quite so close together.

It seems to me that the attempts which have been made in Kentucky to establish the culture of the vine would have been more successful in the Barrens, the soil of which appears to me more adapted for this kind of culture than that on the banks of the Kentucky; the latter is richer it is true, at the same time the nature of the country, and the proximity of the forests render it much damper. This was also my father’s opinion; he thought that [of] the different parts of North America that he had travelled through, during a sojourn of twelve years, the States of Kentucky and Tennessea, and particularly the Barrens, were the parts in which the vine might {150} be cultivated with the greatest success. His opinion was founded in a great measure upon the certainty that the vegetable stratum in the above states lies upon a chalky mass.

The Barrens are circumscribed by a wood about three miles broad, which in some parts joins to surrounding forests. The trees are in general very straggling, and at a greater distance from each other as they approach the meadows. On the side of Tennessea this border is exclusively composed of post oaks, or _quercus oblusiloba_, the wood of which being very hard, and not liable to rot, is, in preference to any other, used for fences. This serviceable tree would be easy to naturalize in France, as it grows among the pines in the worst of soil. We observed again, here and there, in the meadow, several black oaks, or _quercus nigra_; and nut trees, or _juglans hickery_, which rise about twelve or fifteen feet. Sometimes they formed small arbours, but always far enough apart from each other so as not to intercept the surrounding view. With the exception of small willows, about two feet high, _selix longirostris_, and a few _shumacs_, there is not the least appearance of a shrub. The surface of these meadows is generally very even; towards Dripping Spring I observed {151} a lofty eminence, slightly adorned with trees, and bestrewed with enormous rocks, which hang jutting over the main road.

It appears there are a great number of subterraneous caverns in the Barrens, some of which are very near the surface. A short time before I was there, several pieces of the rocks that were decayed, fell with a tremendous crash into the road near Bears-Wallow, as a traveller was passing, who, by the greatest miracle escaped. We may easily conceive with what consequences such accidents must be attended in a country where the plantations are so distant from each other, and where, perhaps, a traveller does not pass for several days.

We remarked in these meadows several holes, widened at the top in the shape of funnels, the breadth of which varies according to their depth. In some of these holes, about five or six feet from the bottom, flows a small vein of water, which, in the same proportions as it fills, loses itself through another part. These kind of springs never fail; in consequence of which several of the inhabitants have been induced to settle in their vicinity; for, except the river Big-Barren, I did not see the smallest rivulet or creek; nor did I hear that they have ever attempted to dig {152} wells; but were they to make the essay, I have no doubt of their success. According to the observations we have just made, the want of water, and wood adapted to make fences, will be long an obstacle to the increase of settlements in this part of Kentucky. Notwithstanding, one of these two inconveniences might be obviated, by changing the present mode of enclosing land, and substituting hedges, upon which the _gleditsia triacanthos_, one of the most common trees in the country, might be used with success. The Barrens at present are very thinly populated, considering their extent; for on the road where the plantations are closest together we counted but eighteen in a space of sixty or seventy miles.

Some of the inhabitants divide land of the Barrens in Kentucky into three classes, according to its quality. That which I crossed, where the soil is yellowish and rather gravelly, appeared to me the best adapted for the culture of corn. That of Indian wheat is almost the only thing to which the inhabitants apply themselves; but as the settlements are of a fresh date, the land has not been able to acquire that degree of prosperity that is observed on this side Mulder Hill. Most of the inhabitants who go to settle in the country, incline upon the skirts, or along {153} the Little and Big Barren rivers, where they are attracted by the advantage that the meadows offer as pasture for the cattle, an advantage which, in a great measure, the inhabitants of the most fertile districts are deprived of, the country being so very woody, that there is scarcely any grass land to be seen.

Every year, in the course of the months of March or April, the inhabitants set fire to the grass, which at that time is dried up, and through its extreme length, would conceal from the cattle a fortnight or three weeks longer the new grass, which then begins to spring up. This custom is nevertheless generally censured; as being set on fire too early, the new grass is stripped of the covering that ought to shelter it from the spring and frosts, and in consequence of which its vegetation is retarded. The custom of burning the meadows was formerly practised by the natives, who came in this part of the country to hunt; in fact, they do it now in the other parts of North America, where there are _savannas_ of an immense extent. Their aim in setting fire to it is to allure the stags, bisons, &c. into the parts which are burnt, where they can discern them at a greater distance. Unless a person has seen these dreadful conflagrations, it is impossible to form {154} the least idea of them. The flames that occupy generally an extent of several miles, are sometimes driven by the wind with such rapidity, that the inhabitants, even on horseback, have become a prey to them. The American sportsmen and the savages preserve themselves from this danger by a very ingenious method; they immediately set fire to the part of the meadow where they are, and then retire into the space that is burnt, where the flame that threatened them stops for the want of nourishment.

{155} CHAP. XVII

_General observations upon Kentucky.--Nature of the soil.--First
settlements in the state.--Right of property uncertain.--
Population._

The state of Kentucky is situated 36 deg. 30 min. and 39 deg. 30 min. north latitude, and 28 deg. and 89 deg. west longitude; its boundaries to the northwest are the Ohio, for an extent of about seven hundred and sixty miles, to the east of Virginia, and to the south of Tennessea; it is separated from Virginia by the river Sandy and the Laurel Mountains, one of the principal links of the Alleghanies. The greatest length of this state is about four hundred miles, and its greatest breadth about two hundred. This vast extent appears to lie upon a bank of chalky stone, identic in its nature, and covered with a stratum of vegetable earth, which varies in its composition, and is from ten to fifteen feet thick. The {156} boundaries of this immense bank are not yet prescribed in any correct manner, but its thickness must be very considerable, to judge of it by the rivers in the country, the borders of which, and particularly those of the Kentucky and Dick rivers, which is one branch of it, rise, in some parts, three hundred feet perpendicular, where the chalky stone is seen quite bare.

The soil in Kentucky, although irregular, is not mountainous, if we except some parts contiguous to the Ohio and on this side Virginia. The chalky stone, and abundant coal mines which lie useless, are the only mineral substances worthy of notice. Iron mines are very scarce there, and, to the best of my remembrance, but one was worked, which is far from being sufficient for the wants of the country.

The Kentucky and Green rivers empty themselves into the Ohio, after a course of three hundred miles; they fall so low in summer time, that they are forded a hundred and fifty miles from their _embouchure_; but in the winter and spring they experience such sudden and strong increases that the waters of the Kentucky rise about forty feet in four-and-twenty hours. This variation is still more remarkable in the secondary rivers which run into it; the latter, {157} though frequently from ten to fifteen fathoms broad, preserve such little water in summer, that there is scarcely one of them which cannot be crossed without wetting the feet; and the stream of water that serpentines upon the bed of chalky rock is at that time reduced to a few inches in depth; in consequence of which we may look upon the Kentucky as an immense bason, which, independent of the natural illapse of its waters through the channel of the rivers, loses a great part of them by interior openings.

The Atlantic part of the United States in that respect affords a perfect contrast with Kentucky, as on the other side of the Alleghanies not the least vestige of chalky stone is seen. The rivers, great and small, however distant from their source, are subject to no other change in the volume of their waters but what results from a more or less rainy season; and their springs, which are very numerous, always supply water in abundance; this applies more particularly to the southern states, with which I am perfectly acquainted.

According to the succinct idea that we have just given of Kentucky, it is easy to judge that the inhabitants are exposed to a very serious inconvenience, {158} that of wanting water in the summer; still we must except those in the vicinity of great rivers and their principal channels, that always preserve water enough to supply their domestic wants; thence it results that many estates, even among the most fertile, are not cleared, and that the owners cannot get rid of them without the greatest difficulty, as the emigrants, better informed now a days, make no purchases before they have a correct statement of localities.

Kentucky is that of the three states situated west of the Alleghanies which was first populated. This country was discovered in 1770, by some Virginia sportsmen, when the favourable accounts they gave of it induced others to go there. No fixed establishment, however, was formed there before 1780. At that time this immense country was not occupied by any Indian nation; they went there to hunt, but all with one common assent made a war of extermination against those who wished to settle there. Thence this country derives the name of Kentucky, which signifies, in the language of the natives, _the Land of Blood_. When the whites made their appearance there, the natives showed still more opposition to their establishment; they carried for a long {159} time death and desolation, and dispatched, after their usual mode, their prisoners in the most cruel torments. This state of things lasted till 1783, at which time the American population having become too strong for them to penetrate to the centre of the establishment, they were reduced to the necessity of attacking the emigrants on their route; and, on the other hand, they were deserted by the English in Canada, who had abetted and supported them in the war.

In 1782 they began to open roads for carriages in the interior of the country; prior to this there were only paths practicable for persons on foot and horseback. Till 1788 those who emigrated from the eastern states travelled by way of Virginia. In the first place, they went to Block House, situated in Holston, westward of the mountains; and as the government of the United States did not furnish them with an escort, they waited at this place till they were sufficiently numerous to pass in safety through the Wilderness, an uninhabited space of a hundred and thirty miles, which they had to travel over before they arrived at Crab Orchard, the first post occupied by the whites.[48] The enthusiasm for emigrating to Kentucky was at that time carried to {160} such a degree in the United States, that some years upwards of twenty thousand have been known to pass, and many of them had even deserted their estates, not having been able to dispose of them quick enough. This overflow of new colonists very soon raised the price of land in Kentucky, from two-pence and two-pence halfpenny per acre, it suddenly rose to seven or eight shillings. The stock-jobbers profited by this infatuation, and, not content with a moderate share of gain, practised the most illegal measures to dispose of the land to great advantage. They went so far as to fabricate false plans, in which they traced rivers favourable for mills and other uses; in this manner many ideal lots, from five hundred to a hundred thousand acres, were sold in Europe, and even in several great towns of the United States.

Till the year 1792, Kentucky formed a part of Virginia; but the distance from Richmond, the seat of government belonging to this state, being seven hundred miles from Lexinton, occasions the most serious inconveniences to the inhabitants, and their number rising considerably above that required to form an independent state, they were admitted into the union in the month of March following. The {161} state of Virginia, on giving up its pretensions to that country, consented to it only on certain conditions; it imposed on the convention at Kentucky an obligation to follow, in part, its code of laws, and particularly to keep up the slave-trade.

Prior to the year 1782, the number of inhabitants at Kentucky did not exceed three thousand; it was about a hundred thousand in 1790, and in the general verification made in 1800, it amounted to two hundred thousand. When I was at Lexinton in the month of August 1802, its population was estimated at two hundred thousand, including twenty thousand negro slaves. Thus, in this state, where there were not ten individuals at the age of twenty-five who were born there, the number of the inhabitants is now as considerable as in seven of the old states; and there are only four where the population is twice as numerous. This increase, already so rapid, would have been much more so had it not been for a particular circumstance that prevents emigrants from going there; I mean the difficulty of proving the right of property. Of all the states in the union it is that wherein the rights of an individual are most subject to contest. I did not stop at the house of one inhabitant who was persuaded of {162} the validity of his own right but what seemed dubious of his neighbour’s.

Among the numerous causes which have produced this incredible confusion with respect to property, one of the principal may be attributed to the ignorance of the surveyors, or rather to the difficulty they experienced, in the early stage of things, in following their professions. The continual state of war in which this country was at that time obliged them frequently to suspend their business, in order to avoid being shot by the natives, who were watching for them in the woods. The danger they ran was extreme, as it is well known a native will go upwards of a hundred miles to kill a single enemy; he stays for several days in the hollow of a tree to take him by surprise, and when he has killed him, he scalps him, and returns with the same rapidity. From this state of things, the result was that the same lot has not only been measured several times by different surveyors, but more frequently it has been crossed by different lines, which distinguish particular parts of that lot from the lots adjacent, which, in return, are in the same situation with regard to those that are contiguous to them; in short, there are lots of a thousand acres where a hundred {163} of them are not reclaimed. Military rights are still looked upon as the most assured. One very remarkable thing is, that many of the inhabitants find a guarantee for their estates that are thus confused; as the law, being always on the side of agriculture, enacts that all improvements shall be reimbursed by the person who comes forward to declare himself the first possessor; and as the estimation, on account of the high price of labour, is always made in favour of the cultivators, it follows that many people dare not claim their rights through fear of considerable indemnifications being awarded against them, and of being in turn expelled by others, who might attack them at the moment when they least expected it. This incertitude in the right of property is an inexhaustible source of tedious and expensive law-suits, which serve to enrich the professional gentlemen of the country.

{164} CHAP. XVIII

_Distinction of Estates.--Species of Trees peculiar to each of
them.--Ginseng.--Animals in Kentucky._

In Kentucky, as well as in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Carolina, the estates are divided into three classes, for the better assessment of the taxes. This division with respect to the fertility of the land is relative to each of these states; thus in Kentucky, for example, they would put in the second class estates, which, east of the mountains, would be ranked in the first, and in the third, those which in Georgia and Low Carolina would be the second. I do not mean, however, to say by this that there are not some possessions in the eastern states as fertile as in the western; but they are seldom found except along the rivers and in the vallies, and do not embrace so considerable a tract of country as in {165} Kentucky, and that part of Tennessea situate west of the Cumberland Mountains.

In these two states they appreciate the fertility of the land by the different species of trees that grow there; thus when they announce the sale of an estate, they take care to specify the particular species of trees peculiar to its various parts, which is a sufficient index for the purchaser. This rule, however, suffers an exception to the Barrens, the soil of which, as I have remarked, is fertile enough, and where there are notwithstanding here and there Scroby oaks, or _quercus nigra_, shell-barked hickeries, or _juglans hickery_, which in forests characterise the worst of soil. In support of this mode of appreciating in America the fecundity of the soil by the nature of the trees it produces, I shall impart a remarkable observation that I made on my entering this state. In Kentucky and Cumberland,[49] independent of a few trees natives of this part of these countries, the mass of the forests, in estates of the first class, is composed of the same species which {166} are found, but very rarely, east of the mountains, in the most fertile soil; these species are the following, _cerasus Virginia_, or cherry-tree; _juglans oblonga_, or white walnut; _pavia lutea_, buck-eye; _fraxinus alba_, _nigra_, _cerulea_, or white, black, and blue ash; _celtis foliis villosis_, or ack berry; _ulmus viscosa_, or slippery elm; _quercus imbricaria_, or black-jack oak; _guilandina disica_, or coffee tree; _gleditsia triacanthos_, or honey locust; and the _annona triloba_, or papaw, which grows thirty feet in height. These three latter species denote the richest lands. In the cool and mountainous parts, and along the rivers where the banks are not very steep, we observed again the _quercus macrocarpa_, or over-cup white oak, the acorns of which are as large as a hen’s egg; the _acer sacharinum_, or sugar-maple; the _fagus sylvatica_, or beech; together with the _planus occidentalis_, or plane: the _liriodendrum tulipifera_, or white and yellow poplar; and the _magnolia acuminata_, or cucumber-tree, all three of which measure from eighteen to twenty feet in circumference; the plane, as I have before observed, attains a greater diameter. The two species of poplar, i.e. the white and yellow wood, have not the least external character, neither in their leaves nor flowers, by which they may be {167} distinguished from each other; and as the species of the yellow wood is of a much greater use, before they fell a tree they satisfy themselves by a notch that it is of that species.

In estates of the second class are the _fagus castanea_, or chestnut tree; _quercus rubra_, or red oak; _quercus tinctoria_, or black oak; _laurus sassafras_, or sassafras; _diospiros virginia_, or persimon; _liquidambar styraciflua_, or sweet gum; _nyssa villosa_, or gum tree, a tree which, in direct opposition to its name, affords neither gum nor resin. Those of the third class, which commonly are dry and mountainous, produce very little except black and red oaks, chestnut oaks of the mountains, _quercus prinus montana_, or rocky oak pines, and a few Virginia cedars.

The _juglans pacane_ is found beyond the _embouchure_ of the rivers Cumberland and Tennessea, whence they sometimes bring it to the markets at Lexinton. This tree does not grow east of the Alleghany Mountains. The _lobelia cardinalis_ grows abundantly in all the cool and marshy places, as well as the _lobelia sphilitica_. The latter is more common in Kentucky than in the other parts of the United States that I travelled over. The _laurus {168} bensoin_, or spice wood, is also very numerous there. The two kinds of _vaccinium_ and _andromeda_, which form a series of more than thirty species, all very abundant in the eastern states, seem in some measure excluded from those of the western and the chalky region, where we found none but the _andromeda arborea_.

In all the fertile parts covered by the forests the soil is completely barren; no kind of herbage is seen except a few plants, scattered here and there; and the trees are always far enough apart that a stag may be seen a hundred or a hundred and fifty fathoms off. Prior to the Europeans settling, the whole of this space, now bare, was covered with a species of the great articulated reed, called _arundinaria macrosperma_, or cane, which is in the woods from three to four inches diameter, and grows seven or eight feet high; but in the swamps and marshes that border the Mississippi it is upward of twenty feet. Although it often freezes in Kentucky, from five to six degrees, for several days together, its foliage keeps always green, and does not appear to suffer by the cold.