What a land for picnics and open-air meetings! The look of it suggested something more large and leisurely than the stress and hurry of our American life. What was there about it that made me think of Walter Scott and the age of romance and chivalry? and of Robin Hood and his adventurous band under the greenwood tree? Probably it was those stately, open forests, with their clear, grassy vistas where a tournament might be held, and those superb breeds of horses wandering through them upon which it was so easy to fancy knights and ladies riding. The land has not the mellow, time-enriched look of England; it could not have it under our harder, fiercer climate; but it has a sense of breadth and a roominess which one never sees in England except in the great royal parks.
The fences are mainly posts and rails, which fall a little short of giving the look of permanence which a hedge or a wall and dike afford.
The Kentuckians have an unhandsome way of treating their forests when they want to get rid of them; they girdle the trees and let them die, instead of cutting them down at once. A girdled tree dies hard; the struggle is painful to look upon; inch by inch, leaf by leaf, it yields, and the agony is protracted nearly through the whole season. The land looked accursed when its noble trees were all dying or had died, as if smitten by a plague. One hardly expected to see grass or grain growing upon it. The girdled trees stand for years, their gaunt skeletons blistering in the sun or blackening in the rain. Through southern Indiana and Illinois I noticed this same lazy, ugly custom of getting rid of the trees.
The most noticeable want of the blue-grass region is water. The streams bore underground through the limestone rock so readily that they rarely come to the surface. With plenty of sparkling streams and rivers like New England, it would indeed be a land of infinite attractions. The most unsightly feature the country afforded was the numerous shallow basins, scooped out of the soil and filled with stagnant water, where the flocks and herds drank. These, with the girdled trees, were about the only things the landscape presented to which the eye did not turn with pleasure. Yet when one does chance upon a spring, it is apt to be a strikingly beautiful one. The limestone rock, draped with dark, dripping moss, opens a cavernous mouth from which in most instances a considerable stream flows. I saw three or four such springs, about which one wanted to linger long. The largest was at Georgetown, where a stream ten or twelve feet broad and three or four feet deep came gliding from a cavernous cliff without a ripple. It is situated in the very edge of the town, and could easily be made a feature singularly attractive. As we approached its head, a little colored girl rose up from its brink with a pail of water. I asked her name. "Venus, sir; Venus." It was the nearest I had ever come to seeing Venus rising from the foam.