226 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 



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 ctock 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 Eiver on the west to the Ohio again on 

 the north and east. Kentucky is a great coun- 

 try for licks; there are any number of streams 

 and springs that bear the name of some lick. 

 Probably the soil of no 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 Eocky 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 im- 

 pression. 



