"PERUSIN'*' THE "PENNYRILE" COUNTRY. 
BY SADIE F. PRICE. 
IN the autobiography of the art critic, Hamerton, he mentions 
that he once had a scheme for travelhng in Egypt and laid it 
before Mr. Ruskin, who said, ''that he avoided travelhng in 
countries where he could not be sure of ordinary comforts, 
such as a white table-cloth and a clean knife and fork ; ''still," 
he added, "I would put up with a great deal of inconvenience 
to be near a mountain." It is this love of Nature that one 
must have to endure the discomforts of an excursion through 
the "ridge country" of southern Kentucky. The State is di- 
vided into four parts, known in local parlance, as the blue- 
grass and the bear-grass countries, the "penny-rile" and the 
Purchase. Though the people of the blue grass" may speak 
disdainfully of the rugged hills and knobs of southern Ken- 
tucky, — the "penny-rile", — yet it has a charm and interest for 
the botanist and the lover of Nature that more cultivated farm- 
lands and level stretches of even the beautifuul blue-grass, 
cannot give. 
With "a comrade neither glum nor merry" I made a 
botanical collecting tour through this country some years ago, 
seeing much of its caves and cliffs, and its quaint people, — a 
type by the way, quite as interesting as their much-written- 
about brothers of the east Kentucky and Tennessee mountains. 
Our way before reaching Green River led over a long stretch 
of turnpike, then a rock incline until we reached the sandstone 
ridge. We crossed many little streams, — one of them dark, 
with asphalt in the soil. A country church bearing the in- 
scription : 
NEW 
BETHEL BAPTIST 
CHAD. 1880 
which, no doubt, translated, would read Baptist Church, Anno 
Domini, 1880, stood in an avenue of tall old sycamores, whose 
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