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 paradise of flowers, or when cultivated, covered with 
crops of Indian corn ten and fifteen feet in height; tobacco, 
with leaves often three 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 say- 
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 cliffs, 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 cliff, 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 
speut itself in the last desperate collisions, before sullen ccn- 
