LIFE OF WILSON. 
CXIX 
pigs are universally fat, owing to the great quantity of mast 
this year. Walking here in wet weather is most execrable, 
and is like travelling on soft soap; a few days of warm weather 
hardens this again almost into stone. Want of bridges is the 
greatest inconvenience to a foot traveller here. Between Shel- 
by ville and Frankfort, having gone out of my way to see a 
pigeon roost, (which by the by is the greatest curiosity I have 
seen since leaving home) I waded a deep creek called Benson, 
nine or ten times. I spent several days in Frankfort, and in 
rambling among the stupendous cliffs of Kentucky river. On 
Thursday evening I entered Lexington. But I cannot do 
justice to these subjects at the conclusion of a letter, which, in 
spite of all my abridgments, has far exceeded in length what I 
first intended. My next will be from Nashville. I shall then 
have seen a large range of Kentucky, and be more able to give 
you a correct delineation of the country and its inhabitants. In 
descending the Ohio, I amused myself with a poetical narrative 
of my expedition, which I have called “ The Pilgrim,’^ an 
extract from which shall close this long and I am afraid tire- 
some letter.” 
TO MR. ALEXANDER LAWSON. 
Nashville, Tennessee, April 2^th, 1810. 
“ My dear Sir, 
“ Before setting out on my journey through the wilderness 
to Natchez, I sit down to give you, according to promise, some 
account of Lexington, and of my adventures through the state 
of Kentucky. These I shall be obliged to sketch as rapidly as 
possible. Neither my time nor my situation enables me to de- 
tail particulars with any degree of regularity; and you must 
condescend to receive them in the same random manner in 
which they occur, altogether destitute of fanciful embellish- 
ment; with nothing but their novelty, and the simplicity of 
truth, to recommend them. 
I saw nothing of Lexington till I had approached within 
half a mile of the place, when the woods opening, I beheld the 
