Ixiv 
MEMOIR OF 
the most luxuriant fields of com and wheat I had ever 
before met with. But one great disadvantage is the want 
of water ; for the whole running streams, with which the 
surface of this country evidently once abounded, have 
been drained off to a great depth, and now murmur among 
these lower regions secluded from the day. One forenoon 
I rode nineteen miles without seeing water ; while my 
faithful horse looked round, but in vain, at every hollow, 
with a wishful and languishing eye, for that precious 
element. These barrens furnished me with excellent 
sport in shooting grouse, which abound here in great 
numbers ; and in the delightful groves, 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 excur- 
sions, 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 , 
