SURVEY WORK IN KENTUCKY 293 



two or three thousand spent dollars in the question and at least twenty- 

 four hundred to come. If the bill passes it will not hereafter require legisla- 

 tive action and will not compel me to take winter journeys. It is snowing 

 hard and I fear you are having your share as it comes from the east. I hate 

 the thousand miles that separate me from Cambridge. 



FBANKFORT, KY., Feb. 13, 1878. 



I hoped to have started from here to-morrow, but I fear that it will be 

 Friday before I can get away. I shall come through New York in order to 

 see the Tilly Foster mine. In case the ground is clear of snow I may try 

 to get up there on Sunday to finish up my work. . . . 



HUMBOLDT, TENN., June 15, 1878. 



I left Louisville at 12.30 and had a very disagreeable ride to this place 

 stifling heat and coal smoke making a very good imitation of hell. Dante 

 needs come again to do justice to it. It is curious to see how far along the 

 season is here. Peaches and plums ripe, and corn in some fields with the 

 plume showing its yellow hue among the green. I have a few hours of waiting 

 here in a place which surely was first named for Humboldt the patent medi- 

 cine man. All the fences are decorated with Buchu or Ague Bitters adver- 

 tisements. I am sure that the people have confounded the names of these 

 two good and great men. Such is fame. 



I shall be in Columbus this evening at 8 P. M., if the ague doesn't shake 

 the train off the track ; the very road seems to have the ague. 



I am glad to have you spared sight of this forlorn country, ... it has 

 an aboriginally damned look which is almost awe-inspiring. Hungry, ravaged 

 fields which the woods cannot reclaim, scabby-looking cotton-fields, and 

 dog-fennel pastures. It is hard to gather hope in such fields. 



COLUMBUS, KENTUCKY, June 16, 1878. 



. . . We are tolerably comfortable here ; the house is very clean and well 

 kept; but it is a shifting little town on the banks of the Mississippi, where 

 it is gridironed by the sun. The thermometer is up to 90 degrees. The land- 

 lady is " sort of kinsfolk." She is a sister of my old friend Edward T , who 



long ago eat and danced himself into the jaws of death. The good woman 

 makes a slender subsistence in keeping a little inn : the natural end of many 

 Virginia efforts with life. I dried myself in the sun for three hours this morn- 

 ing; it seemed to limber me up considerably. I find myself as usual without 

 a toothbrush. I should have three, but they seem to have a curious volatile 

 nature in my hands. I shall have to rob the next apothecary of his stock and 



