192 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



north of the county-seat — Hopkinsville — the whole character 

 of the county changed at once. While five miles to the south 

 was a paradise of flowers, or when cultivated, covered with 

 crops of Indian corn ten and fifteen feet in height ; tobacco, 

 with leaves often thr«e feet by two ; and wheat, five to six 

 feet; the same distance to the north brought you amidst 

 rugged hills of sand or clay, that barely yielded the most 

 meagre subsistence to the poor and simple inhabitants, who 

 necessarily remained hunters. Their rifles supplied them 

 with that provision which the ungrateful earth refused to 

 yield to the plough and the hoe. As you penetrated further 

 in this direction, the country became wilder and more broken 

 at every turn of the narrow trail, until, even so late as twelve 

 years ago, you came upon a country quite as wild and sav- 

 agely unaltered as when the Indian war-whoop alone dis- 

 turbed its echoes. Here your trails cease, and as you push 

 into this formidable looking wilderness, which reaches to 

 Green river — over forty miles — you shudder at the tremendous 

 solitudes of its abrupt clifis, that take away your breath when 

 you come suddenly upon the verge of their deep gorges, wind- 

 ing far away, black with the " Bottom Forests," except where 

 some stream that has leaped with a sullen roar from beneath 

 you down the clifi", gleams sharply out from the shadow here 

 and there ; or when, in the distance, some huge " Pilot Knob" 

 lifts its bare, conical crown so high into the hazy heavens, 

 that it seems like one of old Nilus' Pyramids, set above the 

 hills ! The scene here, is indeed inexpressibly shaggy, wild 

 and stern. These Pilot Knobs, of which there are two, are 

 very famous in the early annals of Kentucky ; and we may 

 have more to say of them. They constitute the most peculiar 

 features of this singular scenery, and there are many legends 

 connected with them. Here the Indians lingered longest 

 after being driven from their northern possessions, or hunting 

 grounds rather ; and here the raging hate of the two races 

 spent itself in the last desperate collisions, before sullen con- 



