232 RIVERBY 



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, drip- 

 ping 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 sin- 

 gularly attractive. As we approached its head, a lit- 

 tle 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 excel- 

 lent, 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 



