CXXXIV 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
The horses of Kentucky are the hai diest in the world, not so 
much by nature as by education and habit. From the commence- 
ment of their existence they are habituated to every extreme of 
starvation and gluttony, idleness and excessive fatigue. In Sum- 
mer they fare sumptuously every day. In Winter, when not a 
blade of grass is to be seen, and when the cows have deprived 
them of the very bark and buds of every fallen tree, they are rid- 
den into town, fifteen or twenty miles, through roads and sloughs 
that would become the graves of any common animal, with a fury 
and celerity incomprehensible by you folks on the other side of the 
Alleghany. They are there fastened to the posts on the sides of 
the streets, and around the public square, where hundreds of them 
may be seen, on a court day, hanging their heads from morning to 
“ TO THE EDITOR OF THE PORT FOLIO. 
BartrarrC s Gardens-, Jtdy \&th, 1811. 
“ Dear Sir, 
“ No man can have a more respectful opinion of the people of Kentucky, 
particularly those of Lexington, than myself; because I have traversed nearly the whole extent 
of their country, and witnessed the effects of their bravery, their active industry, and daring 
spirit for enterprise. But they would be gods, and not men, were faultless, 
“ 1 am sorry that truth will not permit me to retract, as mere jokes, the few disagreeable 
things alluded to. I certainly had no other market place in view, than that of Lexington, m 
the passage above mentioned. As to the circumstance of ‘ skinned squirrels, cut up into quar- 
ters\ which seems to have excited so much sensibility, I candidly acknowledge myself to have 
been incorrect in that statement, and I owe an apology for the same. On referring to my notes 
taken at the time, I find the word ‘ halves', not quarters ; that is, those ‘ curious anatomical 
preparations’, (skinned squirrels) were brought to market in the form of a saddle of venison ; 
not in that of a leg or shoulder of mutton. 
“ With this correction, 1 beg leave to assure your very sensible correspondent, that the 
thing itself was no joke, nor meant for one ; but, like all the rest of the particulars of that 
sketch, ‘ good substantial matter of fact’. 
“ If these explanations, or the perusal of my American Ornithology, should assuage the 
‘ little pique’ in the minds of the good people of Lexington, it will be no less honourable 
to their own good sense, than agreeable to your humble servant,” &c.^' 
* Port Folio for August, 1811. 
