232 EITEBBY 



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 caU Kentucky butter bad; but with all 

 their fine grass and fancy stock, they do not succeed 



