CXXX LIFE OF WILSON. 



the whole running streams, with which the surface of this 

 country evidently once abounded, have been drained off to a 

 great depth, and now murmur among these lower regions, se- 

 cluded from the day. One forenoon I rode nineteen miles 

 without seeing water; while my faithful horse looked round, 

 but in vain, at every hollow, with a wishful and languishing 

 eye, for that precious element. These barrens furnished me 

 with excellent sport in shooting grous, which abound here in 

 great numbers; and in the delightful groves that here and there 

 rise majestically from these plains, I found many new subjects 

 for my Ornithology. I observed all this day, far to the right, 

 a range of high rocky detached hills, or knobs, as they are 

 called, that skirt the barrens, as if they had been once the 

 boundaries of the great lake that formerly covered this vast 

 plain. These, I was told, abound with stone coal and cop- 

 peras. I crossed Big Barren river in a ferry boat, where it 

 was about one hundred yards wide; and passed a small village 

 called Bowling Green, near which I rode my horse up to the 

 summit of one of these high insulated rocky hills, or knobs, 

 which overlooked an immense circumference of country, 

 spreading around bare and leafless, except where the groves 

 appeared, in which there is usually water. Fifteen miles from 

 this, induced by the novel character of the country, I put up 

 for several days, at the house of a pious and worthy presbyte- 

 rian, whence I made excursions, in all directions, through the 

 surrounding country. Between this and Red river the coun- 

 try had a bare and desolate appearance. Caves continued to 

 be numerous; and report made some of them places of conceal- 

 ment for the dead bodies of certain strangers who had disap- 

 peared there. One of these lies near the banks of the Red ri- 

 ver, and belongs to a person of the name of , a man 



of notoriously bad character, and strongly suspected, even by 

 his neighbours, of having committed a foul murder of this kind, 

 which was related to me with all its minutiae of horrors. As 

 this man's house stands by the road side, I was induced, by 

 motives of curiosity, to stop and take a peep of him. On my 



