502 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



more happy, than him who has risen from comparative 

 obscurity, and a very modest little old frame house in 

 Columbia, to the National palace at Washington, and all 

 the attendant luxury of those who dwell in high places. 



"The President's house" 1 is pointed out to the passing 

 traveler, to prove that there is no "national aristocracy" 

 in this country, and that we can "pick up" when we 

 please, an individual that is so little known to fame, that 

 a universal cry is heard of "who is he?" and elevate him 

 to a greater and more enduring honor than was enjoyed 

 by his prototype the fisherman King of Naples. From 

 present appearances, it seems likely that some of the 

 guillotined subjects of the present monarch will be able 

 to remember not only who he is, but who placed him 

 where he is. And yet I have no doubt but they will be 

 ready again to swallow the gilded bait of the next fisher- 

 man that throws his barbed hooks into the muddy stream 

 that for several years has been insiduously washing away 

 its "banks," and spreading its sickly waters over the 

 fields of Native American industry — notwithstanding 

 they were composed of the firmest "Clay." 



But I will leave Columbia and "Columbia's favored 

 son," and wend my way along through the fertile, lime- 

 stone, clayey hills and richly cultivated vales to the city 

 of rocks and red cedars — the capital of Tennessee — with 

 its estimated ten thousand inhabitants of white and black 

 and shades between. Nashville is a pleasant and improv- 

 ing town, built upon rocks so destitute of soil that many 

 of those who are disposed to set out ornamental trees 

 are obliged to blast a hole in the rocks and cast on soil. 

 I noticed that in laying the leading pipes from the water- 

 works through the streets, in many places the rocks have 

 to be blasted out of the trench. One of the greatest orna- 

 ments of the place are the native cedars, which the good 

 taste of a few of the citizens have carefully preserved, 



1 James Knox Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Caro- 

 lina, November 2, 1795. He moved to Tennessee in 1806 and began 

 the practice of law at Columbia in 1820. 



