All Kentucky, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. This division, which may not be sustained by the geologists or the geographers, perhaps not even by the ethnologists, is, in my mind, one of character: the east and south-east mountainous part, the central blue-grass region, and the great western portion, thrifty in both agriculture and manufactures. It is a great self-sustaining empire, lying midway in the Union, and between the North and the South (never having yet exactly made up its mind whether it is North or South), extending over more than seven degrees of longitude. Its greatest length east and west is 410 miles; its greatest breadth, 178 miles. Its area by latest surveys, and larger than formerly estimated, is 42,283 square miles. Within this area prodigal nature has brought together nearly everything that a highly civilized society needs: the most fertile soil, capable of producing almost every variety of product for food or for textile fabrics; mountains of coals and iron ores and limestone; streams and springs everywhere; almost all sorts of hard-wood timber in abundance. Nearly half the State is still virgin forest of the noblest trees, oaks, sugar-maple, ash, poplar, black-walnut, linn, elm, hickory, beech, chestnut, red cedar. The climate may honestly be called temperate: its inhabitants do not need to live in cellars in the summer, nor burn up their fences and furniture in the winter.

Kentucky is loved of its rivers. It can be seen by their excessively zigzag courses how reluctant they are to leave the State, and if they do leave it they are certain to return. The Kentucky and the Green wander about in the most uncertain way before they go to the Ohio, and the Licking and Big Sandy exhibit only a little less reluctance. The Cumberland, after a wide detour in Tennessee, returns; and Powell’s River, joining the Clinch and entering the Tennessee, finally persuades that river, after it has looked about the State of Tennessee and gladdened northern Alabama, to return to Kentucky.

Kentucky is an old State, with an old civilization. It was the pioneer in the great western movement of population after the Revolution. Although it was first explored in 1770, and the Boone trail through the wilderness of Cumberland Gap was not marked till 1775, a settlement had been made in Frankfort in 1774, and in 1790 the Territory had a population of 79,077. This was a marvellous growth, considering the isolation by hundreds of miles of wilderness from Eastern communities, and the savage opposition of the Indians, who selw fifteen hundred whilc settlers from 1783 to 1790. Kentucky was the home of no Indian tribe, but it was the favorite hunting and fighting ground of those north of the Ohio and south of the Cumberland, and they united to resent white interference. When the State came into the Union in 1792—the second admitted—it was the equal in population and agricultural wealth of some of the original States that had been settled a hundred and fifty years, and in 1800 could boast 220,750 inhabitants, and in 1810, 400,511.

At the time of the settlement, New York west of the Hudson, western Pennsylvania, and western Virginia were almost unoccupied except by hostile Indians; there was only chance and dangerous navigation down the Ohio from Pittsburg, and it was nearly eight hundred miles of a wilderness road, which was nothing but a bridle-path, from Philadelphia by way of the Cumberland Gap to central Kentucky. The majority of emigrants came this toilsome way, which was, after all, preferable to the river route, and all passengers and produce went that way eastward, for the steamboat bad not yet made the ascent of the Ohio feasible. In 1779 Virginia resolved to construct a wagon-road through the wilderness, but no road was made for many years afterwards, and indeed no vehicle of any sort passed over it till a road was built by action of the Kentucky Legislature in 1700. I hope it was better then than the portion of it I travelled from Pineville to the Gap in 1888.

Civilization made a great leap over nearly a thousand miles into the open garden-spot of central Kentucky, and the exploit is a unique chapter in our frontier development. Either no other land ever lent itself so easily to civilization as the blue-grass region, or it was exceptionally fortunate in its occupants. They formed almost immediately a society distinguished for its amenities, for its political influence, prosperous beyond precedent in farming, venturesome and active in trade, developing large manufactures, especially from hemp, of such articles as could be transported by river, and sending annually through the wilderness road to the East and South immense droves of cattle, horses, and swine. In the first necessity, and the best indication of superior civilization, good roads for transportation, Kentucky was conspicuous in comparison with the rest of the country. As early as 1825 macadam roads were projected, the turnpike from. Lexington to Maysville on the Ohio was built in 1829, and the work went on by State and county co-operation until the central region had a system of splendid roads, unexcelled in any part of the Union. In 1830 one of the earliest railways in the United States, that from Lexington to Frankfort, was begun; two years later seven miles were constructed, and in 1835 the first locomotive and train of cars ran on it to Frankfort, twenty-seven miles, in two hours and twenty-nine minutes. The structure was composed of stone sills, in which grooves were cut to receive the iron bars. These stone blocks can still be seen along the line of the road, now a part of the Louisville and Nashville system. In all internal improvements the State was very energetic. The canal around the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville was opened in 1831, with some aid from the General Government. The State expended a great deal in improving the navigation of the Kentucky, the Green, and other rivers in its borders by an expensive system of locks and dams; in 1837 it paid $19,500 to engineers engaged in turnpike and river improvement, and in 1839 $31,075 for the same purpose.

The story of early Kentucky reads like a romance. By 1820 it counted a population of over 510,000, and still it had scarcely wagon-road communication with the East. Here was a singular phenomenon, a prosperous community, as one might say a garden in the wilderness, separated by natural barriers from the great life of the East, which pushed out north of it a connected, continuous development; a community almost self-sustaining, having for his centre the loveliest agricultural region in the Union, and evolving a unique social state so gracious and attractive that it was thought necessary to call in the effect of the blue-grass to explain it, unaided human nature being inadequate, it was thought, to such a result. Almost from the beginning fine houses attested the taste and prosperity of the settlers; by 1792 the blue-grass region was dotted with neat and commodious dwellings, fruit orchards and gardens, sugar groves, and clusters of villages; while, a little later, rose, in the midst of broad plantations and park-like forests, lands luxuriant with wheat and clover and corn and hemp and tobacco, the manorial dwellings of the colonial period, like the stately homes planted by the Holland Land Company along the Hudson and the Mohawk and in the fair Genesee, like the pillared structures on the James and the Staunton, and like the solid square mansions of old New England. A type of some of them stands in Frankfort now, a house which was planned by Thomas Jefferson and built in 1796, spacious, permanent, elegant in the low relief of its chaste ornamentation. For comfort, for the purposes of hospitality, for the quiet and rest of the mind, there is still nothing so good as the colonial house, with the slight modifications required by our changed conditions.

From 1820 onward the State grew by a natural increment of population, but without much aid from native or foreign emigration. In 1860 its population was only about 919,000 whites, with some 225,000 slaves and over 10,000 free colored persons. It had no city of the first class, nor any villages specially thriving. Louisville numbered only about 68,000, Lexington less than 15,000, and Frankfort, the capital, a little over 5000. It retained the lead in hemp and a leading position in tobacco; but it had fallen away behind its much younger rivals in manufactures and the building of railways, and only feeble efforts had been made in the development of its extraordinary mineral resources.

How is this arrest of development accounted for? I know that a short way of accounting for it has been the presence of slavery. I would not underestimate this. Free labor would not go where it had to compete with slave labor; white labor now does not like to come into relations with black labor; and capital also was shy of investment in a State where both political economy and social life were disturbed by a color line. But this does not wholly account for the position of Kentucky as to development at the close of the war. So attractive is the State in most respects, in climate, soil, and the possibilities of great wealth by manufactures, that I doubt not the State would have been forced into the line of Western progress and slavery become an unimportant factor long ago, but for certain natural obstacles and artificial influences.

Let the reader look on the map, at the ranges of mountains running from the north-east to the southwest—the Blue Ridge, the Alleghanies, the Cumberland, and Pine mountains, continuous rocky ridges, with scarcely a water gap, and only at long intervals a passable mountain gap—and notice how these would both hinder and deflect the tide of emigration. With such barriers the early development of Kentucky becomes ten times a wonder. But about 1825 an event occurred that placed her at a greater disadvantage in the competition. The Erie Canal was opened. This made New York, and not Virginia, the great commercial highway. The railway development followed. It was easy to build roads north of Kentucky, and the tide of settlement followed the roads, which were mostly aided by land grants; and in order to utilize the land grants the railways stimulated emigration by extensive advertising. Capital and population passed Kentucky by on the north. To the south somewhat similar conditions prevailed. Comparatively cheap roads could be built along the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, following the great valley from Pennsylvania to Alabama; and these south-westwardly roads were also aided by the General Government. The North and South Railway of Alabama, and the Alabama and Great Southern, which cross at Birmingham, were land-grant roads. The roads which left the Atlantic seaboard passed naturally northward and southward of Kentucky, and left an immense area in the centre of the Union—all of western and southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky—without transportation facilities. Until 1880 here was the largest area east of the Mississippi impenetrated by railways.

The war removed one obstacle to the free movement of men desiring work and seeking agreeable homes, a movement marked in the great increase of the industrial population of Louisville and the awakening to varied industries and trade in western Kentucky. The offer of cheap land, which would reward skilful farming In agreeable climatic conditions, has attracted foreign settlers to the plateau south of the blue-grass region; and scientific investigation has made the mountain district in the south-east the object of the eager competition of both domestic and foreign capital. Kentucky, therefore, is entering upon a new era of development. Two phases of it, the Swiss colonies, and the opening of the coal, iron, and timber resources, present special points of interest.

This Incoming of the commercial spirit will change Kentucky for the better and for the worse, will change even the tone of the blue-grass country, and perhaps take away something of that charm about which so much has been written. So thoroughly has this region been set forth by the pen and the pencil and the lens that I am relieved of the necessity of describing it. But I must confess that all I had read of it, all the pictures I had seen, gave me an inadequate idea of its beauty and richness. So far as I know, there is nothing like it in the world. Comparison of it with England is often made in the use of the words “garden” and “park.” The landscape is as unlike the finer parts of Old England as it is unlike the most carefully tended parts of New England. It has neither the intense green, the subdivisions in hedges, the bosky lanes, the picturesque cottages, the niceness of minute garden-culture, of England, nor the broken, mixed lawn gardening and neglected pastures and highways, with the sweet wild hills, of the Berkshire region. It is an open, elevated, rolling land, giving the traveller often the most extended views over wheat and clover, hemp and tobacco fields, forests and blue-grass pastures. One may drive for a hundred miles north and south over the splendid macadam turnpikes, behind blooded roadsters, at an easy ten-mile gait, and see always the same sight—a smiling agricultural paradise, with scarcely a foot, in fence corners, by the road-side, or in low grounds, of uncultivated, uncared-for land. The open country is more pleasing than the small villages, which have not the tidiness of the New England small villages; the houses are for the most part plain; here and there is a negro cabin, or a cluster of them, apt to be unsightly, but always in view somewhere is a plantation-house, more or less pretentious, generally old-fashioned and with the colonial charm. These are frequently off the main thoroughfare, approached by a private road winding through oaks and ash-trees, seated on some gentle knoll or slope, maybe with a small flower-garden, but probably with the old sentimental blooms that smell good and have reminiscences, in the midst of waving fields of grain, blue-grass pastures, and open forest glades watered by a dear stream. There seems to be infinite peace in a house so surrounded. The house may have pillars, probably a colonial porch and door-way with earving in bass-relief, a wide hall, large square rooms, low studded, and a general air of comfort. What is new in it in the way of art, furniture, or bric-À-brac may not be in the best taste, and may “swear” at the old furniture and the delightful old portraits. For almost always will be found some portraits of the post-Revolutionary period, having a traditional and family interest, by Copley or Jouett, perhaps a Stuart, maybe by some artist who evidently did not paint for fame, which carry the observer back to the colonial society in Virginia, Philadelphia, and New York. In a country house and in Lexington I saw portraits, life-size and miniature, of Rebecca Gratz, whose loveliness of person and character is still a tender recollection of persons living. She was a great beauty and toast in her day. It was at her house in Philadelphia, a centre of wit and gayety, that Washington Irving and Henry Brevoort and Gulian C. Verplanck often visited. She shone not less in New York society, and was the most intimate friend of Matilda Hoffman, who was betrothed to Irving; indeed, it was in her arms that Matilda died, fadeless always to us as she was to Irving, in the loveliness of her eighteenth year. The well-founded tradition is that Irving, on his first visit to Abbotsford, told Scott of his own loss, and made him acquainted with the beauty and grace of Rebecca Gratz, and that Scott, wanting at the moment to vindicate a race that was aspersed, used her as a model for Rebecca in “Ivanhoe.”

One distinction of the blue-grass region is the forests, largely of gigantic oaks, free of all undergrowth, carpeted with the close-set, luscious, nutritive blue-grass, which remains green all the season when it is cropped by feeding. The blue-grass thrives elsewhere, notably in the upper Shenandoah Valley, where somewhat similar limestone conditions prevail; but this is its natural habitat. On all this elevated rolling plateau the limestone is near the surface. This grass blooms towards the middle of June in a bluish, almost a peacock blue, blossom, which gives to the fields an exquisite hue. By the end of the month the seed ripens into a yellowish color, and while the grass is still green and lush underneath, the surface presents much the appearance of a high New England pasture in August. When it is ripe, the top is cut for the seed. The limestone and the blue-grass together determine the agricultural pre-eminence of the region, and account for the fine breeding of the horses, the excellence of the cattle, the stature of the men, and the beauty of the women; but they have social and moral influence also. It could not well be otherwise, considering the relation of the physical condition to disposition and character. We should be surprised if a rich agricultural region, healthful at the same time, where there is abundance of food, and wholesome cooking is the rule, did not affect the tone of social life. And I am almost prepared to go further, and think that blue-grass is a specific for physical beauty and a certain graciousness of life. I have been told that there is a natural relation between Presbyterianism and blue-grass, and am pointed to the Shenandoah and to Kentucky as evidence of it. Perhaps Presbyterians naturally seek a limestone country. But the relation, if it exists, is too subtle and the facts are too few to build a theory on. Still, I have no doubt there is a distinct variety of woman known as the blue-grass girl. A geologist told me that once when he was footing it over the State with a geologist from another State, as they approached the blue-grass region from the southward they were carefully examining the rock formation and studying the surface indications, which are usually marked on the border line, to determine exactly where the peculiar limestone formation began. Indications, however, were wanting. Suddenly my geologist looked up the road and exclaimed:

“We are in the blue-grass region now.”

“How do you know?” asked the other.

“Why, there is a blue-grass girl.”

There was no mistaking the neat dress, the style, the rounded contours, the gracious personage. A few steps farther on the geologists found the outcropping of the blue limestone.

Perhaps the people of this region are trying to live up to the thorough-bred. A pedigree is a necessity. The horse is of the first consideration, and either has or gives a sort of social distinction; first, the running horse, the thorough-bred, and now the trotting horse, which is beginning to have a recognizable descent, and is on the way to be a thorough-bred. Many of the finest plantations are horse farms; one might call them the feature of the country. Horse-raising is here a science, and as we drive from one estate to another, and note the careful tillage, the trim fences, the neat stables, the pretty paddocks, and the houses of the favorites, we see how everything is intended to contribute to the perfection in refinement of fibre, speed, and endurance of the noble animal. Even persons who are usually indifferent to horses cannot but admire these beautiful high-bred creatures, either the famous ones displayed at the stables, or the colts and fillies, which have yet their reputations to make, at play in the blue-grass pastures; and the pleasure one experiences is a refined one in harmony with the landscape. Usually horse-dealing carries with it a lowering of the moral tone, which we quite understand when we say of a man that he is “horsy.” I suppose the truth is that man has degraded the idea of the horse by his own evil passions, using him to gamble and cheat with. Now, the visitor will find little of these degrading associations in the blue-grass region. It is an orthodox and a moral region. The best and most successful horse-breeders have nothing to do with racing or betting. The yearly product of their farms is sold at auction, without reserve or favor. The sole business is the production of the best animals that science and care can breed. Undeniably where the horse is of such importance he is much in the thought, and the use of “horsy” phrases in ordinary conversation shows his effect upon the vocabulary. The recital of pedigree at the stables, as horse after horse is led out, sounds a little like a chapter from the Book of Genesis, and naturally this Biblical formula gets into a conversation about people.

And after the horses there is whiskey. There are many distilleries in this part of the country, and a great deal of whiskey is made. I am not defending whiskey, at least any that is less than thirty years old and has attained a medicinal quality. But I want to express my opinion that this is as temperate as any region in the United States. There is a wide-spread strict temperance sentiment, and even prohibition prevails to a considerable degree. Whiskey is made and stored, and mostly shipped away; rightly or wrongly, it is regarded as a legitimate business, like wheatraising, and is conducted by honorable men. I believe this to be the truth, and that drunkenness does not prevail in the neighborhood of the distilleries, nor did I see anywhere in the country evidence of a habit of dram drinking, of the traditional matter-of-course offering of whiskey as a hospitality. It is true that mint grows in Kentucky, and that there are persons who would win the respect of a tide-water Virginian in the concoction of a julep. And no doubt in the mind of the born Kentuckian there is a rooted belief that if a person needed a stimulant, the best he can take is old hand-made whiskey. Where the manufacture of whiskey is the source of so much revenue, and is carried on with decorum, of course the public sentiment about it differs from that of a community that makes its money in raising potatoes for starch. Where the horse is so beautiful, fleet, and profitable, of course there is intense interest in him, and the general public take a lively pleasure in the races; but if the reader has been accustomed to associate this part of Kentucky with horse-racing and drinking as prominent characteristics, he must revise his opinion.

Perhaps certain colonial habits lingered longer in Kentucky than elsewhere. Travellers have spoken about the habit of profanity and gambling, especially the game of poker. In the West generally profane swearing is not as bad form as it is in the East. But whatever distinction central Kentucky had in profanity or poker, it has evidently lost it. The duel lingered long, and prompt revenge for insults, especially to women. The blue-grass region has “histories”—beauty has been fought about; women have had careers; families have run out through dissipation. One may hear stories of this sort even in the Berkshire Hills, in any place where there have been long settlement, wealth, and time for the development of family and personal eccentricities. And there is still a flavor left in Kentucky; there is still a subtle difference in its social tone; the intelligent women are attractive in another way from the intelligent New England women—they have a charm of their own. May Heaven long postpone the day when, by the commercial spirit and trade and education, we shall all be alike in all parts of the Union! Yet it would be no disadvantage to anybody if the graciousness, the simplicity of manner, the refined hospitality, of the blue-grass region should spread beyond the blue limestone of the Lower Silurian.

In the excellent State Museum at Frankfort, under the charge of Prof. John R. Procter, * who is State Geologist and also Director of the Bureau of Immigration, in addition to the admirable exhibit of the natural resources of Kentucky, are photographs, statistics, and products showing the condition of the Swiss and other foreign farming colonics recently established in the State, which were so interesting and offered so many instructive points that I determined to see some of the colonies.

This museum and the geological department, the intelligent management of which has been of immense service to the commonwealth, is in one of the detached buildings which make up the present Capitol. The Capitol is altogether antiquated, and not a credit to the State. The room in which the Lower House meets is shabby and mean, yet I noticed that it is fairly well lighted by side windows, and debate can be heard in it conducted in an ordinary tone of voice. Kentucky will before many years be accommodated with new State buildings more suited to her wealth and dignity. But I should like to repeat what was said in relation to the Capitol of Arkansas. Why cannot our architects devise a capitol suited to the wants of those who occupy it? Why must we go on making these huge inconvenient structures, mainly for external display, in which the legislative Chambers are vast air-tight and water-tight compartments, commonly completely surrounded by other rooms and lobbies, and lighted only from the roof, or at best by high windows in one or two sides that permit no outlook—rooms difficult to speak or hear in, impossible to ventilate, needing always artificial light? Why should the Senators of the United States be compelled to occupy a gilded dungeon, unlighted ever by the sun, unvisited ever by the free wind of heaven, in which the air is so foul that the Senators sicken? What sort of legislation ought we to expect from such Chambers? It is perfectly feasible to build a legislative room cheerful and light, open freely to sun and air on three sides. In order to do this it may be necessary to build a group of connected buildings, instead of the parallelogram or square, which is mostly domed, with gigantic halls and stair-ways, and, considering the purpose for which it is intended, is a libel on our ingenuity and a burlesque on our civilization.

Kentucky has gone to work in a very sensible way to induce immigration and to attract settlers of the right sort. The Bureau of Immigration was established in 1880. It began to publish facts about the State, in regard to the geologic formation, the soils, the price of lands, both the uncleared and the lands injured by slovenly culture, the kind and amount of products that might be expected by thrifty farming, and the climate; not exaggerated general proclamations promising sudden wealth with little labor, but facts such as would attract the attention of men willing to work in order to obtain for themselves and their children comfortable homes and modest independence. Invitations were made for a thorough examination of lands—of the different sorts of soils in different counties—before purchase and settlement. The leading idea was to induce industrious farmers who were poor, or had not money enough to purchase high-priced improved lands, to settle upon lands that the majority of Kentuckians considered scarcely worth cultivating, and the belief was that good farming would show that these neglected lands were capable of becoming very productive. Eight years’ experience has fully justified all these expectations. Colonies of Swiss, Germans, Austrians, have come, and Swedes also, and these have attracted many from the North and North-west. In this period I suppose as many as ten thousand immigrants of this class, thrifty cultivators of the soil, have come into the State, many of whom are scattered about the State, unconnected with the so-called colonies. These colonies are not organized communities in any way separated from the general inhabitants of the State. They have merely settled together for companionship and social reasons, where a sufficiently large tract of cheap land was found to accommodate them. Each family owns its own farm, and is perfectly independent. An indiscriminate immigration has not been desired or encouraged, but the better class of laboring agriculturists, grape-growers, and stock-raisers. There are several settlements of these, chiefly Swiss, dairy-farmers, cheese-makers, and vine-growers, in Laurel County; others in Lincoln County, composed of Swiss, Germans, and Austrians; a mixed colony in Rock Castle County; a thriving settlement of Austrians in Boyle County; a temperance colony of Scandinavians in Edmonson County; another Scandinavian colony in Grayson County; and scattered settlements of Germans and Scandinavians in Christian County. These settlements have from one hundred to over a thousand inhabitants each. The lands in Laurel and Lincoln counties, which I travelled through, are on a high plateau, with good air and temperate climate, but with a somewhat thin, loamy, and sandy soil, needing manure, and called generally in the State poor land—poor certainly compared with the blue-grass region and other extraordinarily fertile sections. These farms, which had been more or less run over by Kentucky farming, were sold at from one to five dollars an acre. They are farms that a man cannot live on in idleness. But they respond well to thrifty tillage, and it is a sight worth a long journey to see the beautiful farms these Swiss have made out of land that the average Kentuckian thought not worth cultivating. It has not been done without hard work, and as most of the immigrants were poor, many of them have had a hard struggle in building comfortable houses, reducing the neglected land to order, and obtaining stock. A great attraction to the Swiss was that this land is adapted to vine culture, and a reasonable profit was expected from selling grapes and making wine. The vineyards are still young; experiment has not yet settled what kind of grapes flourish best, but many vine-growers have realized handsome profits in the sale of fruit, and the trial is sufficient to show that good wine can be produced. The only interference thus far with the grapes has been the unprecedented late freeze last spring.

At the recent exposition in Louisville the exhibit of these Swiss colonies—the photographs showing the appearance of the unkempt land when they bought it, and the fertile fields of grain and meadow and vineyards afterwards, and the neat, plain farm cottages, the pretty Swiss chalet with its attendants of intelligent comely girls in native costumes offering articles illustrating the taste and the thrift of the colonies, wood-carving, the products of the dairy, and the fruit of the vine—attracted great attention.

I cannot better convey to the reader the impression I wish to in regard to this colonization and its lesson for the country at large than by speaking more in detail of one of the Swiss settlements in Laurel County. This is Bernstadt, about six miles from Pittsburg, on the Louisville and Nashville road, a coal-mining region, and offering a good market for the produce of the Swiss farmers. We did not need to be told when we entered the colony lands; neater houses, thrifty farming, and better roads proclaimed it. It is not a garden-spot; in some respects it is a poor-looking country; but it has abundant timber, good water, good air, a soil of light sandy loam, which is productive under good tillage. There are here, I suppose, some two hundred and fifty families, scattered about over a large area, each on its farm. There is no collection of houses; the church (Lutheran), the school-house, the store, the post-office, the hotel, are widely separated; for the hotel-keeper, the store-keeper, the postmaster, and, I believe, the school-master and the parson, are all farmers to a greater or less extent. It must be understood that it is a primitive settlement, having as yet very little that is picturesque, a community of simple working-people. Only one or two of the houses have any pretension to taste in architecture, but this will come in time—the vine-clad porches, the quaint gables, the home-likeness. The Kentuckian, however, will notice the barns for the stock, and a general thriftiness about the places. And the appearance of the farms is an object-lesson of the highest value.

The chief interest to me, however, was the character of the settlers. Most of them were poor, used to hard work and scant returns for it in Switzerland. What they have accomplished, therefore, is the result of industry, and not of capital. There are among the colonists skilled laborers in other things than vine-growing and cheese-making—watch-makers and wood-carvers and adepts in various trades. The thrifty young farmer at whose pretty house we spent the night, and who has saw-mills at Pittsburg, is of one of the best Swiss families; his father was for many years President of the republic, and he was a graduate of the university at Lucerne. There were others of the best blood and breeding and schooling, and men of scientific attainments. But they are all at work close to the soil. As a rule, however, the colonists were men and women of small means at home. The notable thing is that they bring with them a certain old civilization, a unity of simplicity of life with real refinement, courtesy, politeness, good-humor. The girls would not be above going out to service, and they would not lose their self-respect in it. Many of them would be described as “peasants,” but I saw some, not above the labors of the house and farm, with real grace and dignity of manner and charm of conversation. Few of them as yet speak any English, but in most houses are evidences of some German culture. Uniformly there was courtesy and frank hospitality. The community amuses itself rationally. It has a very good brass band, a singing club, and in the evenings and holidays it is apt to assemble at the hotel and take a little wine and sing the songs of father-land. The hotel is indeed at present without accommodations for lodgers—nothing but a Wirthshaus with a German garden where dancing may take place now and then. With all the hard labor, they have an idea of the simple comforts and enjoyments of life. And they live very well, though plainly. At a house where we dined, in the colony Strasburg, near Bernstadt, we had an excellent dinner, well served, and including delicious soup. If the colony never did anything else than teach that part of the State how to make soup, its existence would be justified. Here, in short, is an element of homely thrift, civilization on a rational basis, good-citizenship, very desirable in any State. May their vineyards flourish! When we departed early in the morning—it was not yet seven—a dozen Switzers, fresh from the dewy fields, in their working dresses, had assembled at the hotel, where the young landlady also smiled a welcome, to send us off with a song, which ended, as we drove away, in a good-bye yodel.

A line drawn from the junction of the Scioto River with the Ohio south-west to a point in the southern boundary about thirty miles east of where the Cumberland leaves the State defines the eastern coal-measures of Kentucky. In area it is about a quarter of the State—a region of plateaus, mountains, narrow valleys, cut in all directions by clear, rapid streams, stuffed, one may say, with coals, streaked with iron, abounding in limestone, and covered with superb forests. Independent of other States a most remarkable region, but considered in its relation to the coals and iron ores of West Virginia, western Virginia, and eastern Tennessee, it becomes one of the most important and interesting regions in the Union. Looking to the south-eastern border, I hazard nothing in saying that the country from the Breaks of Sandy down to Big Creek Gap (in the Cumberland Mountain), in Tennessee, is on the eve of an astonishing development—one that will revolutionize eastern Kentucky, and powerfully affect the iron and coal markets of the country. It is a region that appeals as well to the imagination of the traveller as to the capitalist. My personal observation of it extends only to the portion from Cumberland Gap to Big Stone Gap, and the head-waters of the Cumberland between Cumberland Mountain and Pine Mountain, but I saw enough to comprehend why eager purchasers are buying the forests and the mining rights, why great companies, American and English, are planting themselves there and laying the foundations of cities, and why the gigantic railway corporations are straining every nerve to penetrate the mineral and forest heart of the region. A dozen roads, projected and in progress, are pointed towards this centre. It is a race for the prize. The Louisville and Nashville, running through soft-coal fields to Jellico and on to Knoxville, branches from Corbin to Barboursville (an old and thriving town) and to Pineville. From Pineville it is under contract, thirteen miles, to Cumberland Gap. This gap is being tunnelled (work going on at both ends) by an independent company, the tunnel to be open to all roads. The Louisville and Nashville may run up the south side of the Cumberland range to Big Stone Gap, or it may ascend the Cumberland River and its Clover Fork, and pass over to Big Stone Gap that way, or it may do both. A road is building from Knoxville to Cumberland Gap, and from Johnson City to Big Stone Gap. A road is running from Bristol to within twenty miles of Big Stone Gap; another road nears the same place—the extension of the Norfolk and Western—from Pocahontas down the Clinch River. From the north-west many roads are projected to pierce the great deposits of coking and cannel coals, and find or bore a way through the mountain ridges into south-western Virginia. One of these, the Kentucky Union, starting from Lexington (which is becoming a great railroad centre), has reached Clay City, and will soon be open to the Three Forks of the Kentucky River, and on to Jackson, in Breathitt County. These valley and transridge roads will bring within short hauling distance of each other as great a variety of iron ores of high and low grade, and of coals, coking and other, as can be found anywhere—according to the official reports, greater than anywhere else within the same radius. As an item it may be mentioned that the rich, pure, magnetic iron ore used in the manufacture of Bessemer steel, found in East Tennessee and North Carolina, and developed in greatest abundance at Cranberry Forge, is within one hundred miles of the superior Kentucky coking coal. This contiguity (a contiguity of coke, ore, and limestone) in this region points to the manufacture of Bessemer steel here at less cost than it is now elsewhere made.

It is unnecessary that I should go into details as to the ore and coal deposits of this region: the official reports are accessible. It may be said, however, that the reports of the Geological Survey as to both coal and iron have been recently perfectly confirmed by the digging of experts. Aside from the coal-measures below the sandstone, there have been found above the sandstone, north of Pine Mountain, 1650 feet of coal-measures, containing nine beds of coal of workable thickness, and between Pine and Cumberland mountains there is a greater thickness of coal-measures, containing twelve or more workable beds. Some of these are coking coals of great excellence. Cannel-coals are found in sixteen of the counties in the eastern coal-fields. Two of them at least are of unexampled richness and purity. The value of a cannel-coal is determined by its volatile combustible matter. By this test some of the Kentucky cannel-coal excels the most celebrated coals of Great Britain. An analysis of a cannel-coal in Breathitt County gives 66.28 of volatile combustible matter; the highest in Great Britain is the Boghead, Scotland, 51.60 per cent. This beautiful cannel-coal has been brought out in small quantities via the Kentucky River; it will have a market all over the country when the railways reach it. The first coal identified as coking was named the Elkhorn, from the stream where it was found in Pike County. A thick bed of it has been traced over an area of 1600 square miles, covering several counties, but attaining its greatest thickness in Letcher, Pike, and Harlan. This discovery of coking coal adds greatly to the value of the iron ores in north-eastern Kentucky, and in the Red and Kentucky valleys, and also of the great deposits of ore on the south-east boundary, along the western base of the Cumberland, along the slope of Powell’s Mountain, and also along Wallin’s Ridge, three parallel lines, convenient to the coking coal in Kentucky. This is the Clinton or red fossil ore, stratified, having from 45 to 54 per cent, of metallic iron. Recently has been found on the north side of Pine Mountain in Kentucky, a third deposit of rich “brown” ore, averaging 52 per cent, of metallic iron. This is the same as the celebrated brown ore used in the furnaces at Clifton Forge; it makes a very tough iron. I saw a vein of it on Straight Creek, three miles north of Pineville, just opened, at least eight feet thick.

The railway to Pineville follows the old Wilderness road, the trail of Boone and the stage-road, along which are seen the ancient tavern stands where the jolly story-telling travellers of fifty years ago were entertained and the droves of horses and cattle were fed. The railway has been stopped a mile west of Pineville by a belligerent property owner, who sits there with his Winchester rifle, and will not let the work go on until the courts compel him. The railway will not cross the Cumberland at Pineville, but higher up, near the great elbow. There was no bridge over the stream, and we crossed at a very rough and rocky wagon-ford. Pineville, where there has loner been a backwoods settlement on the south bend of the river just after it breaks through Pine Mountain, is now the centre of a good deal of mining excitement and real-estate speculation. It has about five hundred inhabitants, and a temporary addition of land buyers, mineral experts, engineers, furnace projectors, and railway contractors. There is not level ground for a large city, but what there is is plotted out for sale. The abundant iron ore, coal, and timber here predict for it a future of some importance. It has already a smart new hotel, and business buildings, and churches are in process of erection. The society of the town had gathered for the evening at the hotel. A wandering one-eyed fiddler was providentially present who could sing and play “The Arkansas Traveller” and other tunes that lift the heels of the young, and also accompany the scream of the violin with the droning bagpipe notes of the mouth-harmonica. The star of the gay company was a graduate of Annapolis, in full evening dress uniform, a native boy of the valley, and his vis-À-vis was a heavy man in a long linen duster and carpet slippers, with a palm-leaf fan, who crashed through the cotillon with good effect. It was a pleasant party, and long after it had dispersed, the troubadour, sitting on the piazza, wiled away sleep by the break-downs, jigs, and songs of the frontier.

Pineville and its vicinity have many attractions; the streams are clear, rapid, rocky, the foliage abundant, the hills picturesque. Straight Creek, which comes in along the north base of Pine Mountain, is an exceedingly picturesque stream, having along its banks fertile little stretches of level ground, while the gentle bordering hills are excellent for grass, fruit orchards, and vineyards. The walnut-trees have been culled out, but there is abundance of oat, beech, poplar, encumber, and small pines. And there is no doubt about the mineral wealth.

We drove from Pineville to Cumberland Gap, thirteen miles, over the now neglected Wilderness road, the two mules of the wagon unable to pull us faster than two miles an hour. The road had every variety of badness conceivable—loose stones, ledges of rock, bowlders, sloughs, holes, mud, sand, deep fords. We crossed and followed up Clear Creek (a muddy stream) over Log Mountain (full of coal) to Canon Creek. Settlements were few—only occasional poor shanties. Climbing over another ridge, we reached the Yellow Creek Valley, through which the Yellow Creek meanders in sand. This whole valley, lying very prettily among the mountains, has a bad name for “difficulties.” The hills about, on the sides and tops of which are ragged little farms, and the valley itself, still contain some lawless people. We looked with some interest at the Turner house, where a sheriff was killed a year ago, at a place where a “severe” man fired into a wagon-load of people and shot a woman, and at other places where in recent times differences of opinion had been settled by the revolver. This sort of thing is, however, practically over. This valley, close to Cumberland Gap, is the site of the great city, already plotted, which the English company are to build as soon as the tunnel is completed. It is called Middleborough, and the streets are being graded and preparations made for building furnaces. The north side of Cumberland Mountain, like the south side of Pine, is a conglomerate, covered with superb oak and chestnut trees. We climbed up to the mountain over a winding road of ledges, bowlders, and deep gullies, rising to an extended pleasing prospect of mountains and valleys. The pass has a historic interest, not only as the ancient highway, but as the path of armies in the Civil War. It is narrow, a deep road between overhanging rocks. It is easily defended. A light bridge thrown over the road, leading to rifle-pits and breastworks on the north side, remains to attest the warlike occupation. Above, on the bald highest rocky head on the north, guns were planted to command the pass. Two or three houses, a blacksmith’s shop, a drinking tavern, behind which on the rocks four men were playing old sledge, made up the sum of its human attractions as we saw it. Just here in the pass Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia touch each other. Virginia inserts a narrow wedge between the other two. On our way down the wild and picturesque road we crossed the State of Virginia and went to the new English hotel in Tennessee. We passed a magnificent spring, which sends a torrent of water into the valley, and turns a great millwheel—a picture in its green setting—saw the opening of the tunnel with its shops and machinery, noted the few houses and company stores of the new settlement, climbed the hill to the pretty hotel, and sat down on the piazza to look at the scene. The view is a striking one. The valley through which the Powell River runs is pleasant, and the bold, bare mountain of rock at the right of the pass is a noble feature in the landscape. With what joy must the early wilderness pilgrims have hailed this landmark, this gate-way to the Paradise beyond the mountains! Some miles north in the range are the White Rocks, gleaming in the sun and conspicuous from afar, the first signal to the weary travellers from the east of the region they sought. Cumberland Gap is full of expectation, and only awaits the completion of the tunnel to enter upon its development. Here railways from the north, south, and west are expected to meet, and in the Yellow Creek Valley beyond, the English are to build a great manufacturing city. The valleys and sides of these mountain ranges (which have a uniform elevation of not much more than 2000 to 2500 feet) enjoy a delightful climate, moderate in the winter and temperate in the summer. This whole region, when it is accessible by rail, will be attractive to tourists.

We pursued our journey up the Powell River Valley, along the base of the Cumberland, on horseback—one day in a wagon in this country ought to satisfy anybody. The roads, however, are better on this side of the mountain; all through Lee County, In Virginia, in spots very good. This is a very fine valley, with good water, cold and clear, growing in abundance oats and corn, a constant succession of pretty views. We dined excellently at a neat farm-house on the river, and slept at the house of a very prosperous farmer near Boon’s Path post-office. Here we are abreast the White Rocks, the highest point of the Cumberland (3451 feet), that used to be the beacon of immigration.

The valley grows more and more beautiful as we go up, full fields of wheat, corn, oats, friendly to fruit of all sorts, with abundance of walnut, oak, and chestnut timber—a fertile, agreeable valley, settled with well-to-do farmers. The next morning, beautifully clear and sparkling, we were off at seven o’clock through a lovely broken country, following the line of Cumberland (here called Stone) Mountain, alternately little hills and meadows, cultivated hill-sides, stretches of rich valley, exquisite views—a land picturesque and thriving. Continuing for nine miles up Powell Valley, we turned to the left through a break in the hills into Poor Valley, a narrow, wild, sweet ravine among the hills, with a swift crystal stream overhung by masses of rhododendrons in bloom, and shaded by magnificent forest-trees. We dined at a farm-house by Pennington’s Gap, and had a swim in the north fork of Powell River, which here, with many a leap, breaks through the bold scenery in the gap. Farther on, the valley was broader and more fertile, and along the wide reaches of the river grew enormous beech-trees, the russet foliage of which took on an exquisite color towards evening. Indeed, the ride all day was excitingly interesting, with the great trees, the narrow rich valleys, the frequent sparkling streams, and lovely mountain views. At sunset we came to the house of an important farmer who has wide possessions, about thirteen miles from Big Stone Gap. We have nothing whatever against him except that he routed us out at five o’clock of a foggy Sunday morning, which promised to be warm—July 1st—to send us on our way to “the city.” All along we had heard of “the city.” In a radius of a hundred miles Big Stone Gap is called nothing but “the city,” and our anticipations were raised.

That morning’s ride I shall not forget. We crossed and followed Powell River. All along the banks are set the most remarkable beech-trees I have ever seen—great, wide-spreading, clean-boled trees, overbading the stream, and giving under their boughs, nearly all the way, ravishingly lovely views. This was the paradisiacal way to Big Stone Gap, which we found to be a round broken valley, shut in by wooded mountains, covered more or less with fine trees, the meeting-place of the Powell River, which comes through the gap, and its south fork. In the round elevation between them is the inviting place of the future city. There are two Big Stone Gaps—the one open fields and forests, a settlement of some thirty to forty houses, most of them new and many in process of building, a hotel, and some tents; the other, the city on the map. The latter is selling in small lots, has wide avenues, parks, one of the finest hotels in the South, banks, warehouses, and all that can attract the business man or the summer lounger.

The heavy investments in Big Stone Gap and the region I should say were fully justified by the natural advantages. It is a country of great beauty, noble mountain ranges, with the valleys diversified by small hills, fertile intervales, fine streams, and a splendid forest growth. If the anticipations of an important city at the gap are half realized, the slopes of the hills and natural terraces will be dotted with beautiful residences, agreeable in both summer and winter. It was the warmest time of the year when we were there, but the air was fresh and full of vitality. The Big Stone Gap Improvement Company has the city and its site in charge; it is a consolidation of the various interests of railway companies and heavy capitalists, who have purchased the land. The money and the character of the men behind the enterprise insure a vigorous prosecution of it. On the west side of the river are the depot and switching-grounds which the several railways have reserved for their use, and here also are to be the furnaces and shops. When the city outgrows its present site it can extend up valleys in several directions. We rode through line forests up the lovely Powell Valley to Powell Mountain, where a broad and beautiful meadow offers a site for a suburban village. The city is already planning for suburbs. A few miles south of the city a powerful stream of clear water falls over precipices and rocks seven hundred feet in continuous rapids. This is not only a charming addition to the scenic attractions of the region, but the stream will supply the town with excellent water and unlimited “power.” Beyond, ten miles to the north-east, rises High Knob, a very sightly point, where one gets the sort of view of four States that he sees on an atlas. It is indeed a delightful region; but however one may be charmed by its natural beauty, he cannot spend a day at Big Stone Gap without being infected with the great enterprises brooding there.

We forded Powell River and ascended through the gap on its right bank. Before entering the gorge we galloped over a beautiful level plateau, the counterpart of that where the city is laid out, reserved for railways and furnaces. From this point the valley is seen to be wider than we suspected, and to have ample room for the manufacturing and traffic expected. As we turned to see what we shall never see again—the virgin beauty of nature in this site—the whole attractiveness of this marvellously picturesque region burst upon us—the great forests, the clear swift streams, the fertile meadows, the wooded mountains that have so long secluded this beauty and guarded the treasures of the hills.

The pass itself, which shows from a distance only a dent in the green foliage, surprised us by its wild beauty. The stony road, rising little by little above the river, runs through a magnificent forest, gigantic trees growing in the midst of enormous bowlders, and towering among rocks that take the form of walls and buttresses, square structures like the Titanic ruins of castles; below, the river, full and strong, rages over rocks and dashes down, filling the forest with its roar, which is echoed by the towering cliffs on either side. The woods were fresh and glistening from recent rains, but what made the final charm of the way was the bloom of the rhododendron, which blazed along the road and illuminated the cool recesses of the forest. The time for the blooming of the azalea and the kalmia (mountain-laurel) was past, but the pink and white rhododendron was in full glory, masses of bloom, not small stalks lurking like underbrush, but on bushes attaining the dignity of trees, and at least twenty-five feet high. The splendor of the forest did not lessen as we turned to the left and followed up Pigeon Creek to a high farming region, rough but fertile, at the base of Black Mountain. Such a wealth of oak, beech, poplar, chestnut, and ash, and, sprinkled in, the pretty cucumber-magnolia in bloom! By sunset we found our way, off the main road, to a lonely farm-house hidden away at the foot of Morris Pass, secluded behind an orchard of apple and peach trees. A stream of spring-water from the rocks above ran to the house, and to the eastward the ravine broadened into pastures. It seemed impossible to get farther from the world and its active currents. We were still in Virginia.

Our host, an old man over six feet in height, with spare, straight, athletic form, a fine head, and large clear gray eyes, lived here alone with his aged spouse. He had done his duty by his country in raising twelve children (that is the common and orthodox number in this region), who had all left him except one son, who lived in a shanty up the ravine. It was this son’s wife who helped about the house and did the milking, taking care also of a growing family of her own, and doing her share of field-work. I had heard that the women in this country were more industrious than the men. I asked this woman, as she was milking that evening, if the women did all the work. No, she said; only their share. Her husband was all the time in the field, and even her boys, one only eight, had to work with him; there was no time to go to school, and indeed the school didn’t amount to much anyway—only a little while in the fall. She had all the care of the cows. “Men,” she added, “never notice milking;” and the worst of it was that she had to go miles around in the bush night and morning to find them. After supper we had a call from a bachelor who occupied a cabin over the pass, on the Kentucky side, a loquacious philosopher, who squatted on his heels in the door-yard where we were sitting, and interrogated each of us in turn as to our names, occupations, residence, ages, and politics, and then gave us as freely his own history and views of life. His eccentricity in this mountain region was that he had voted for Cleveland and should do it again. Mr. Morris couldn’t go with him in this; and when pressed for his reasons he said that Cleveland had had the salary long enough, and got rich enough out of it. The philosopher brought the news, had heard it talked about on Sunday, that a man over Clover Fork way had killed his wife and brother. It was claimed to be an accident; they were having a game of cards and some whiskey, and he was trying to kill his son-in-law. Was there much killing round here? Well, not much lately. Last year John Cone, over on Clover Fork, shot Mat Harner in a dispute over cards. Well, what became of John Cone? Oh, he was killed by Jim Blood, a friend of Harner. And what became of Blood? Well, he got shot by Elias Travers. And Travers? Oh, he was killed by a man by the name of Jacobs. That ended it. None of ‘em was of much account. There was a pleasing naivete in this narrative. And then the philosopher, whom the milkmaid described to me next morning as “a simlar sort of man,” went on to give his idea about this killing business. “All this killing in the mountains is foolish. If you kill a man, that don’t aggravate him; he’s dead and don’t care, and it all comes on you.”

In the early morning we crossed a narrow pass in the Black Mountain into “Canetucky,” and followed down the Clover Fork of the Cumberland. All these mountains are perfectly tree-clad, but they have not the sombreness of the high regions of the Great Smoky and the Black Mountains of North Carolina. There are few black balsams, or any sort of evergreens, and the great variety of deciduous trees, from the shining green of the oak to the bronze hue of the beech, makes everywhere soft gradations of color most pleasing to the eye. In the autumn, they say, the brilliant maples in combination with the soberer bronzes and yellows of the other forest-trees give an ineffable beauty to these ridges and graceful slopes. The ride down Clover Fork, all day long, was for the most part through a virgin world. The winding valley is at all times narrow, with here and there a tiny meadow, and at long intervals a lateral opening down which another sparkling brook comes from the recesses of this wilderness of mountains. Houses are miles apart, and usually nothing but cabins half concealed in some sheltered nook. There is, however, hidden on the small streams, on mountain terraces, and high up on the slopes, a considerable population, cabin dwellers, cultivators of corn, on the almost perpendicular hills. Many of these cornfields are so steep that it is impossible to plough them, and all the cultivation is done with the hoe. I heard that a man was recently killed in this neighborhood by falling out of his cornfield. The story has as much foundation as the current belief that the only way to keep a mule in the field where you wish him to stay is to put him into the adjoining lot. But it is true that no one would believe that crops could be raised on such nearly perpendicular slopes as these unless he had seen the planted fields.

In my limited experience I can recall no day’s ride equal in simple natural beauty—not magnificence—and splendor of color to that down Clover Fork. There was scarcely a moment of the day when the scene did not call forth from us exclamations of surprise and delight. The road follows and often crosses the swift, clear, rocky stream. The variegated forest rises on either hand, but all along the banks vast trees without underbrush dot the little intervales. Now and then, in a level reach, where the road wound through these monarch stems, and the water spread in silver pools, the perspective was entrancing. But the color! For always there were the rhododendrons, either gleaming in masses of white and pink in the recesses of the forest, or forming for us an allÉe, close set, and uninterrupted for miles and miles; shrubs like trees, from twenty to thirty feet high, solid bouquets of blossoms, more abundant than any cultivated parterre, more brilliant than the finest display in a horticultural exhibition. There is an avenue of rhododendrons half a mile long at Hampton Court, which is world-wide famous. It needs a day to ride through the rhododendron avenue on Clover Fork, and the wild and free beauty of it transcends all creations of the gardener.

The inhabitants of the region are primitive and to a considerable extent illiterate. But still many strong and distinguished men have come from these mountain towns. Many families send their children away to school, and there are fair schools at Barbersville, Harlan Court-house, and in other places. Long isolated from the moving world, they have retained the habits of the early settlers, and to some extent the vernacular speech, though the dialect is not specially marked. They have been until recently a self-sustaining people, raising and manufacturing nearly everything required by their limited knowledge and wants. Not long ago the women spun and wove from cotton and hemp and wool the household linen, the bed-wear, and the clothes of the family. In many houses the loom is still at work. The colors used for dyeing were formerly all of home make except, perhaps, the indigo; now they use what they call the “brought in” dyes, bought at the stores; and prints and other fabrics are largely taking the places of the home-made. During the morning we stopped at one of the best houses on the fork, a house with a small apple-orchard in front, having a veranda, two large rooms, and a porch and kitchen at the back. In the back porch stood the loom with its web of half-finished cloth. The farmer was of the age when men sun themselves on the gallery and talk. His wife, an intelligent, barefooted old woman, was still engaged in household duties, but her weaving days were over. Her daughters did the weaving, and in one of the rooms were the linsey-woolsey dresses hung up, and piles of gorgeous bed coverlets, enough to set up half a dozen families. These are the treasures and heirlooms handed down from mother to daughter, for these handmade fabrics never wear out. Only eight of the twelve children were at home. The youngest, the baby, a sickly boy of twelve, was lounging about the house. He could read a little, for he had been to school a few weeks. Reading and writing were not accomplishments in the family generally. The other girls and boys were in the cornfield, and going to the back door, I saw a line of them hoeing at the top of the field. The field was literally so steep that they might have rolled from the top to the bottom. The mother called them in, and they lounged leisurely down, the girls swinging themselves over the garden fence with athletic ease. The four eldest were girls: one, a woman of thirty-five, had lost her beauty, if she ever had any, with her teeth; one, of thirty, recently married, had a stately dignity and a certain nobility of figure; one, of sixteen, was undeniably pretty—almost the only woman entitled to this epithet that we saw in the whole journey. This household must have been an exception, for the girls usually marry very young. They were all, of course, barefooted. They were all laborers, and evidently took life seriously, and however much their knowledge of the world was limited, the household evidently respected itself. The elder girls were the weavers, and they showed a taste and skill in their fabrics that would be praised in the Orient or in Mexico. The designs and colors of the coverlets were ingenious and striking. There was a very handsome one in crimson, done in wavy lines and bizarre figures, that was called the Kentucky Beauty, or the Ocean Wave, that had a most brilliant effect. A simple, hospitable family this. The traveller may go all through this region with the certainty of kindly treatment, and in perfect security—if, I suppose, he is not a revenue officer, or sent in to survey land on which the inhabitants have squatted.

We came at night to Harlan Court-house, an old shabby hamlet, but growing and improving, having a new court-house and other signs of the awakening of the people to the wealth here in timber and mines. Here in a beautiful valley three streams—Poor, Martin, and Clover forks—unite to form the Cumberland. The place has fourteen “stores” and three taverns, the latter a trial to the traveller. Harlan has been one of the counties most conspicuous for lawlessness. The trouble is not simply individual wickedness, but the want of courage of public opinion, coupled with a general disrespect for authority. Plenty of people lament the state of things, but want the courage to take a public stand. The day before we reached the Court-house the man who killed his wife and his brother had his examination. His friends were able to take the case before a friendly justice instead of the judge. The facts sworn to were that in a drunken dispute over cards he tried to kill his son-in-law, who escaped out of the window, and that his wife and brother opposed him, and he killed them with his pistol. Therefore their deaths were accidental, and he was discharged. Many people said privately that he ought to be hanged, but there was entire public apathy over the affair. If Harlan had three or four resolute men who would take a public stand that this lawlessness must cease, they could carry the community with them. But the difficulty of enforcing law and order in some of these mountain counties is to find proper judges, prosecuting officers, and sheriffs. The officers are as likely as not to be the worst men in the community, and if they are not, they are likely to use their authority for satisfying their private grudges and revenges. Consequently men take the “law” into their own hands. The most personally courageous become bullies and the terror of the community. The worst citizens are not those who have killed most men, in the opinion of the public. It ought to be said that in some of the mountain counties there has been very little lawlessness, and in some it has been repressed by the local authorities, and there is great improvement on the whole. I was sorry not to meet a well-known character in the mountains, who has killed twenty-one men. He is a very agreeable “square” man, and I believe “high-toned,” and it is the universal testimony that he never killed a man who did not deserve killing, and whose death was a benefit to the community. He is called, in the language of the country, a “severe” man. In a little company that assembled at the Harlan tavern were two elderly men, who appeared to be on friendly terms enough. Their sons had had a difficulty, and two boys out of each family had been killed not very long ago. The fathers were not involved in the vendetta. About the old Harlan court-house a great many men have been killed during court week in the past few years. The habit of carrying pistols and knives, and whiskey, are the immediate causes of these deaths, but back of these is the want of respect for law. At the ford of the Cumberland at Pineville was anchored a little house-boat, which was nothing but a whiskey-shop. During our absence a tragedy occurred there. The sheriff with a posse went out to arrest some criminals in the mountain near. He secured his men, and was bringing them into Pineville, when it occurred to him that it would be a good plan to take a drink at the houseboat. The whole party got into a quarrel over their liquor, and in it the sheriff was killed and a couple of men seriously wounded. A resolute surveyor, formerly a general in our army, surveying land in the neighborhood of Pineville, under a decree of the United States Court, has for years carried on his work at the personal peril of himself and his party. The squatters not only pull up his stakes and destroy his work day after day, but it was reported that they had shot at his corps from the bushes. He can only go on with his work by employing a large guard of armed men.

This state of things in eastern Kentucky will not be radically changed until the railways enter it, and business and enterprise bring in law and order. The State Government cannot find native material for enforcing law, though there has been improvement within the past two years. I think no permanent gain can be expected till a new civilization comes in, though I heard of a bad community in one of the counties that had been quite subdued and changed by the labors of a devout and plain-spoken evangelist. So far as our party was concerned, we received nothing but kind treatment, and saw little evidences of demoralization, except that the young men usually were growing up to be “roughs,” and liked to lounge about with shot-guns rather than work. But the report of men who have known the country for years was very unfavorable as to the general character of the people who live on the mountains and in the little valleys—that they were all ignorant; that the men generally were idle, vicious, and cowardly, and threw most of the hard labor in the field and house upon the women; that the killings are mostly done from ambush, and with no show for a fair fight. This is a tremendous indictment, and it is too sweeping to be sustained. The testimony of the gentlemen of our party, who thoroughly know this part of the State, contradicted it. The fact is there are two sorts of people in the mountains, as elsewhere.

The race of American mountaineers occupying the country from western North Carolina to eastern Kentucky is a curious study Their origin is in doubt. They have developed their peculiarities in isolation. In this freedom stalwart and able men have been from time to time developed, but ignorance and freedom from the restraints of law have had their logical result as to the mass. I am told that this lawlessness has only existed since the war; that before, the people, though ignorant of letters, were peaceful. They had the good points of a simple people, and if they were not literate, they had abundant knowledge of their own region. During the war the mountaineers were carrying on a civil war at home. The opposing parties were not soldiers, but bushwhackers. Some of the best citizens were run out of the country, and never returned. The majority were Unionists, and in all the mountain region of eastern Kentucky I passed through there are few to-day who are politically Democrats. In the war, home-guards were organized, and these were little better than vigilance committees for private revenge. Disorder began with this private and partly patriotic warfare. After the war, when the bushwhackers got back to their cabins, the animosities were kept up, though I fancy that politics has little or nothing to do with them now. The habit of reckless shooting, of taking justice into private hands, is no doubt a relic of the disorganization during the war.

Worthless, good-for-nothing, irreclaimable, were words I often heard applied to people of this and that region. I am not so despondent of their future. Railways, trade, the sight of enterprise and industry, will do much with this material. Schools will do more, though it seems impossible to have efficient schools there at present. The people in their ignorance and their undeveloped country have a hard struggle for life. This region is, according to the census, the most prolific in the United States. The girls marry young, bear many children, work like galley-slaves, and at the time when women should be at their best they fade, lose their teeth, become ugly, and look old. One great cause of this is their lack of proper nourishment. There is nothing unhealthy in out-door work in moderation if the body is properly sustained by good food. But healthy, handsome women are not possible without good fare. In a considerable part of eastern Kentucky (not I hear in all) good wholesome cooking is unknown, and civilization is not possible without that. We passed a cabin where a man was very ill with dysentery. No doctor could be obtained, and perhaps that, considering what the doctor might have been, was not a misfortune. But he had no food fit for a sick man, and the women of the house were utterly ignorant of the diet suitable to a man in his state. I have no doubt that the abominable cookery of the region has much to do with the lawlessness, as it visibly has to do with the poor physical condition.

The road down the Cumberland, in a valley at times spreading out into fertile meadows, is nearly all the way through magnificent forests, along hill-sides fit for the vine, for fruit, and for pasture, while frequent outcroppings of coal testify to the abundance of the fuel that has been so long stored for the new civilization. These mountains would be profitable as sheep pastures did not the inhabitants here, as elsewhere in the United States, prefer to keep dogs rather than sheep.

I have thus sketched hastily some of the capacities of the Cumberland region. It is my belief that this central and hitherto neglected portion of the United States will soon become the theatre of vast and controlling industries.

I want space for more than a concluding word about western Kentucky, which deserves, both for its capacity and its recent improvements, a chapter to itself. There is a limestone area of some 10,000 square miles, with a soil hardly less fertile than that of the blue-grass region, a high agricultural development, and a population equal in all respects to that of the famous and historic grass country. Seven of the ten principal tobacco-producing counties in Kentucky and the largest Indian corn and wheat raising counties are in this part of the State. The western coal-field has both river and rail transportation, thick deposits of iron ore, and more level and richer farming lands than the eastern coal-field. Indeed, the agricultural development in this western coal region has attracted great attention.

Much also might be written of the remarkable progress of the towns of western Kentucky within the past few years. The increase in population is not more astonishing than the development of various industries. They show a vigorous, modern activity for which this part of the State has not, so far as I know, been generally credited. The traveller will find abundant evidence of it in Owensborough, Henderson, Hopkinsville, Bowling Green, and other places. As an illustration: Paducah, while doubling its population since 1880, has increased its manufacturing 150 per cent. The town had in 1880 twenty-six factories, with a capital of $600,000, employing 950 men; now it has fifty factories, with a cash capital of $2,000,000, employing 3250 men, engaged in a variety of industries—to which a large iron furnace is now being added. Taking it all together—variety of resources, excellence of climate, vigor of its people—one cannot escape the impression that Kentucky has a great future.