xc 
LIFE OF 
that here and there rise majestically from these plains, I found 
many new subjects for my Ornithology. I observed all this day, 
far to the right, a range of high, rocky, detached hills, or knobs, 
as they are called, that skirt the barrens, as if they had been once 
the boundaries of the great lake that formerly covered this vast 
plain. These, I was told, abound with stone, coal, and copperas. 
I crossed Big Barren river in a ferry-boat, where it was about one 
hundred yards wide ; and passed a small village called Bowling 
Green, near which I rode my horse up to the summit of one of 
these high insulated rocky hills, or knobs, which overlooked an 
immense circumference of country, spreading around bare and 
leafless, except where the groves appeared, in which there is 
usually water. Fifteen miles from this, induced by the novel 
character of the country, I put up for several days at the house of 
a pious and worthy presbyterian, whence I made excursions, in all 
directions, through the surrounding country. Between this and 
Red River, the country had a bare and desolate appearance. 
Caves continued to be numerous ; and report made some of them 
places of concealment for the dead bodies of certain strangers who 
had disappeared there. One of these lies near the banks of the 
Red River, and belongs to a person of the name of , a man 
of notoriously bad character, and strongly suspected, even by his 
neighbours, of having committed a foul murder of this kind, which 
was related to me, with all its minutiae of horrors. As this man’s 
house stands by the roadside, I was induced by motives of curiosity 
to stop and take a peep of him. On my arrival I found two persons 
in conversation under the piazza, one of whom informed me that 
he was the landlord. He was a dark mulatto, rather above the 
common size, inclining to corpulency, with legs small in proportion 
to his size, and walked lame. His countenance bespoke a soul 
capable of deeds of darkness. I had not been three minutes in 
company, when he invited the other man (who I understood was | 
a traveller) and myself to walk back and see his cave, to which I 
immediately consented. The entrance is in the perpendicular 
front of a rock, behind the house — has a door, with a lock and key 
to it, and was crowded with pots of milk, placed near the running | 
stream. The roof and sides of solid rock were wet and dropping 
with water. Desiring to walk before with the lights, I 
