Part 7

After this visit, I went with a party of ladies and gentlemen, nine miles into the country to the seat of Colonel [David] Meade [1744-1838] where we dined and passed the day. This gentleman, who is near seventy, is a Virginian of the old school. He has been a good deal in England, in his youth, and brought home with him English notions of a country seat, though he is a great republican in politics. He and his wife dress in the costume of the olden time. He has the square coat and great cuffs, the vest of the court, short breeches, and white stockings, at all times. Mrs. Meade has the long waist, the white apron, the stays, the ruffles about the elbows, and the cap of half a century ago. She is very mild and ladylike, and though between sixty and seventy, plays upon the piano-forte with the facility and cheerfulness of a young lady. Her husband resembles Colonel Pickering in the face, and the shape of the head. He is entirely a man of leisure, never having followed any business, and never using his fortune but in adorning his place and entertaining his friends and strangers. No word is ever sent to him that company is coming. To do so offends him. But a dinner--he dines at the hour of four--is always ready for visitors; and servants are always in waiting. Twenty of us went out today, without warning, and were entertained luxuriously on the viands of the country. Our drink consisted of beer, toddy, and water. Wine, being imported and expensive, he never gives; nor does he allow cigars to be smoked in his presence. His house consists of a cluster of rustic cottages, in front of which spreads a beautiful, sloping lawn, as smooth as velvet. From this diverge, in various direction, and forming vistas terminated by picturesque objects, groves and walks extending over some acres. Seats, Chinese temples, verdant banks, and alcoves are interspersed at convenient distances. The lake, over which presides a Grecian temple, that you may imagine to be the residence of the water nymphs, has in it a small island, which communicates with the shore by a white bridge of one arch. The whole is surrounded by a low rustic fence of stone, surmounted and almost hidden by honey-suckle and roses, now in full flower, and which we gathered in abundance to adorn the ladies. Everything is laid out for walking and pleasure. His farm he rents, and does nothing for profit. The whole is in rustic taste. You enter from the road, through a gate between rude and massive columns, a field without pretension, wind a considerable distance through a noble park to an inner gate, the capitals to whose pillars are unique, being formed of the roots of trees, carved by nature. Then the rich scene of cultivation, of verdure and flower-capped hedges, bursts upon you. There is no establishment like this in our country. Instead of a description, I might have given you its name, "_Chaumiere du Prairies_."

CONSTANTINE S. RAFINESQUE

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, the learned, eccentric scientist of Kentucky and the West, was born near Constantinople, Turkey, October 22, 1783. He was of French-German descent. His boyhood years were spent in Italy and in traveling on the Continent. Rafinesque came to America in 1802, and he remained in this country but three years, when he returned to Italy; and there the subsequent ten years of his life were passed. In 1809 he married, after a fashion, a Sicilian woman, Josephine Vaccaro, who bore him two children. Rafinesque returned to America in 1815, and a short time after his arrival, he met his former friend, John D. Clifford, of Philadelphia and Lexington--twin-towns in those days--"the only man he ever loved," who persuaded him to come out to Kentucky. At Henderson, Kentucky, Rafinesque met the great Audubon, who took him under his roof, and who told him many amusing tales of the fishes of the Ohio--which the little scientist believed, as coming from a famous man--and which caused him no end of trouble and work in after years. Audubon ridiculed him to his face, which the simple-minded man could not understand; and in his _Journals_ the ornithologist has much fun at his guest's expense. That he treated him very badly, no one can deny. Through Clifford's influence, probably, Rafinesque was appointed, in 1819, to the chair of natural science and modern languages in Transylvania University. This was during the presidency of Horace Holley, when the old University was at the high-tide of its history, but the diminutive scientist, though heralded as "the most learned man in America," was not received as such in the Blue Grass region of Kentucky an hundred years ago. From the president down to the children of the little city he was looked upon as an impossible creature. Seven of the best years of his life were spent in the service of the University and of the town. His boldest dream for the town was a Botanical Garden, modeled upon the gardens of France, and though he did actually make a splendid start toward this ideal, in the end all his plans came to nothing. In June, 1825, Rafinesque left Lexington, never to return. He went to Philadelphia, where the remaining fifteen years of his life were spent. Death discovered the little fellow among his books, plants, and poverty, September 18, 1840, in a miserable, rat-ridden garret on Race street, Philadelphia. Rafinesque's publications reach the surprising number of 447, consisting of books, pamphlets, magazine articles, translations, and reprints. His most important works are _Ichthyologia Ohiensis, or Natural History of the Fishes Inhabiting the River Ohio and its Tributary Streams_ (Lexington, 1820), a reprint of which his biographer, Dr. Call, has published (Cleveland, 1899); and his _Ancient Annals of Kentucky_, which Humphrey Marshall printed as an introduction to his _History of Kentucky_ (Frankfort, 1824). The oversheets of this were made into a pamphlet of thirty-nine pages. The little work considers the antiquities of the State, and is the starting point for all latter-day writers upon "the prehistoric men of Kentucky." Imagination and fact run riotously together, yet the work has been correctly characterized as "the most remarkable history of Kentucky that was ever written, or ever will be."

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _A Kentucky Cardinal_, by James Lane Allen (New York, 1894); _Life and Writings of Rafinesque_, by Richard E. Call (Louisville, Kentucky, 1895); _Rafinesque: A Sketch of his Life_, by T. J. Fitzpatrick (Des Moines, Iowa, 1911).

GEOLOGICAL ANNALS OF THE REVOLUTIONS OF NATURE IN KENTUCKY

[From _Ancient Annals of Kentucky_ (Frankfort, Kentucky, 1824)]

1. Every complete history of a country ought to include an account of the physical changes and revolutions, which it may have undergone.

2. The documents for such geological survey, are to be found everywhere in the bowels of the earth, its rocks and strata, with the remains of organized bodies imbedded therein, which are now considered as the medals of nature.

3. The soil of Kentucky shows, like many other countries, that it has once been the bed of the sea. In James's Map, the primitive ocean is supposed to have covered North America, by having a former level of 6000 feet above the actual level. Since the highest lands in Kentucky do not exceed 1800 feet above the level of the actual ocean, they were once covered with at least 4200 feet of water.

4. The study of the soil of Kentucky, proves evidently the successive and gradual retreat of the salt waters, without evincing any proofs of any very violent or sudden disruptions or emersions of land, nor eruptions of the ocean, except some casual accidents, easily ascribed to earthquakes, salses and submarine volcanoes.

5. There are no remains of land or burning volcanoes in Kentucky, nor of any considerable fresh water lake. All the strata are nearly horizontal, with valleys excavated by the tides and streams during the soft state of the strata.

6. After these preliminary observations, I shall detail the successive evolution of this soil and its productions, under six distinct periods of time, which may be compared to the six epochs or days of creation, and supposed to have lasted an indefinite number of ages.

MANN BUTLER

Mann Butler, the first Kentucky historian who worked with comparatively modern methods, eliminating personal prejudices and imagination, was born at Baltimore, July, 1784. At the age of three years he was taken to the home of his grandfather in Chelsea, England. Mann Butler returned to the United States, in 1798, and entered St. Mary's College, Georgetown, D. C., from which institution he was afterwards graduated in the arts, medicine, and law. His tastes were decidedly literary, and he preferred law to medicine as being, perhaps, more in line with literature. He emigrated to Kentucky, locating at Lexington, in 1806, for the practice of law. He later abandoned law for pedagogy, opening an academy at Versailles, Kentucky. Some years later he taught in Maysville and Frankfort, and was then called to a professorship in Transylvania University, Lexington, where he remained for several years. In 1831 Butler removed to Louisville, where he was engaged in teaching for fifteen years. His _History of Kentucky_ (Louisville, 1834; Cincinnati, 1836) was, after Filson's florid sentences, Rafinesque's imagination, and Marshall's prejudices and castigations, most welcome and timely. He was microscopic in finding facts, fair, having no enemies to punish, an excellent chronicler, in short, and doing a work that was much needed. The Kentucky legislature took a keen interest in his history, rendering him great assistance. Butler's _Appeal from the Misrepresentations of James Hall, Respecting the History of Kentucky and the West_ (Frankfort, 1837), was a just criticism of the Cincinnati writer's _Sketches of History in the West_ (Philadelphia, 1835), a work in which fact and fiction are well-nigh inseparable. Mann Butler spent the last seven years of his life in St. Louis, teaching and in preparing a history of the Ohio valley, which he left in manuscript, but which, together with his library, was afterwards destroyed by Federal soldiers during the Civil War. He was killed in Missouri, in 1852, while a passenger on a Pacific train which was wrecked by the falling of a bridge spanning the Gasconade river. Mann Butler had many of the qualities required in a great historian, and the work he did has lived well and will live longer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _History of Kentucky_, by R. H. Collins (Covington, 1882); Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New York, 1887, v. i).

PIONEER VISITORS

[From _A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1834)]

During this same year [1769], a party of about forty stout hunters, "from New River, Holstein and Clinch" united in a hunting expedition west of the Cumberland Mountains.

Nine of this party, led on by Col. James Knox, reached Kentucky; and, from the time they were absent from home, they "obtained the name of the _Long Hunters_." This expedition reached "the country south of the Kentucky river," and became acquainted with Green river, and the lower part of the Cumberland.

In addition to these parties, so naturally stimulated by the ardent curiosity incident to early and comparatively, idle society, the claimants of military bounty lands which had been obtained from the British crown, for services against the French, furnished a new and keen band of western explorers. Their land warrants were surveyed on the Kenhawa and the Ohio; though most positively against the very letter of the royal proclamation of '63. But at this distance from the royal court, it was nothing new in the history of government that edicts emanating, even from the king in council, should be but imperfectly regarded. However, this may be, land warrants were actually surveyed on the Kenhawa as early as 1772, and in 1773, several surveyors were deputied to lay out bounty lands on the Ohio river.

Amongst others Thomas Bullitt, uncle to the late Alexander Scott Bullitt, first lieutenant governor of Kentucky; and Hancock Taylor, engaged in this adventurous work. These gentlemen with their company were overtaken on the 28th of May, 1773, by the McAfees, whose exertions will hereafter occupy a conspicuous station in this narrative.

On the 29th, the party in one boat and four canoes, reached the Ohio river, and elected Bullitt their captain.

There is a romantic incident connected with this gentleman's descent of the Ohio, evincing singular intrepidity and presence of mind; it is taken from his journal, as Mr. [Humphrey] Marshall says, and the author has found it substantially confirmed by the McAfee papers. While on his voyage, he left his boat and went alone through the woods to the Indian town of Old Chillicothe, on the Scioto. He arrived in the midst of the town undiscovered by the Indians, until he was waving his white flag as a token of peace. He was immediately asked what news? Was he from the Long Knife? And why, if he was a peace-messenger, he had not sent a runner? Bullitt, undauntedly replied, that he had no bad news; was from the Long Knife, and as the red men and the whites were at peace, he had come among his brothers to have friendly talk with them, about living on the other side of the Ohio; that he had no runner swifter than himself; and, that he was in haste and could not wait the return of a runner. "Would you," said he, "if you were very hungry, and had killed a deer, send your squaw to town to tell the news, and wait her return before you eat?" This simple address to their own feelings, soon put the Indians in good humor, and at his desire a council was assembled to hear his talk the next day. Captain Bullitt then made strong assurances of friendship on the part of the whites and acknowledged that these "Shawanees and Delawares, our nearest neighbors," "did not get any of the money or blankets given for the land, which I and my people are going to settle. But it is agreed by the great men, who own the land, that they will make a present to both the Delawares and the Shawanees, the next year; and the year following, that shall be as good." On the ensuing day, agreeably to the very deliberate manner of the Indians in council, Captain Bullitt was informed, that "he seemed kind and friendly, and that it pleased them well." That as "to settling the country on the other side of the Ohio with your people, we are particularly pleased that they are not to _disturb_ us in our hunting. For we must hunt, to kill meat for our women and children, and to get something to buy our powder and lead with, and to get us blankets and clothing." In these talks, there seems a strange want of the usual sagacity of the Indians as to the consequences of white men settling on their hunting grounds; so contrary to their melancholy experience for a century and a half previous; yet, the narrative is unimpeachable. On the part of Bullitt, too, the admission of _no compensation_ to the Delawares and Shawanees, appears to be irreconcilable with the treaty at Fort Stanwix with the master tribes of the confederacy, the Six Nations. However, this may be, the parties separated in perfect harmony, and Captain Bullitt proceeded to the Falls. Here he pitched his camp above the mouth of Bear-grass creek, retiring of a night to the upper point of the shoal above _Corn Island_, opposite to the present city of Louisville. It was this gentleman, who, according to the testimony of Jacob Sodowsky, a respectable farmer, late of Jessamine county, in this State, first laid off the town of Louisville, in August, 1773. He likewise surveyed Bullitt's Lick in the adjoining county, of the same name.

ZACHARY TAYLOR

Zachary Taylor, twelfth president of the United States, was a Kentuckian save for his accidental birth near Orange, Virginia, September 24, 1784. His father, Richard Taylor, had been planning for many years to remove to Kentucky, but his vacillation gave Virginia another president. When but nine months old Zachary Taylor was brought to Kentucky, the family settling near Louisville. He "grew up to manhood with the yell of the savage and the crack of the rifle almost constantly ringing in his ears." The first twenty-four years of his life were passed wholly in Kentucky amid all the dangers of the Western wilderness. He was fighting Indians almost before he could hold a rifle at arm's length, and in such an environment his education was, of course, very limited. Taylor entered the army, in 1808, serving in the War of 1812, in Black Hawk's war of 1832, and against the Seminole Indians (1836-1837). In 1837 he was brevetted brigadier-general. In 1838 General Taylor was placed in command of the military stations in Florida; and in 1845 he took command of the army on the Texas border. The next five years of General Taylor's life is the history of the Mexican War. At Palo Alto, Monterey, and at Buena Vista, on February 22-23, 1847, where he crushed Santa Anna, he was the absolute man of the hour, the hero of the country. On the strength of his military renown, General Taylor was elected as the Whig candidate for president of the United States, in 1848, defeating General Lewis Cass of Michigan, and former president, Martin Van Buren, of New York. He was inaugurated in March, 1849, but he died at the White House, Washington, July 9, 1850. The country was torn asunder with many important questions during Taylor's administration, which, though brief, was a stormy one. His remains were interred at his old home near Louisville--the only president ever buried in this State--and a ruined monument marks the grave at this time. In 1908 a volume of his _Letters from the Battlefields of the Mexican War_ appeared.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Some Notable Families of America_, by Annah Robinson Watson; _The War with Mexico_, by H. O. Ladd (New York, 1835); _General Taylor_, by O. O. Howard (New York, 1892).

A LETTER TO HENRY CLAY

[From _The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay_, edited by Calvin Colton (New York, 1855)]

Baton Rouge, La., December 28, 1847.

My dear Sir,--Your kind and acceptable letter of the 13th instant, congratulating me on my safe return to the United States, and for the complimentary and flattering terms you have been pleased to notice my services, I beg leave to tender you my sincere thanks.

The warm and hearty reception I have met with from so many of my fellow-citizens, where I have mingled among them since my return, in addition to their manifestations of their high appreciation and approval of my conduct while in Mexico, has been truly gratifying, and has ten-fold more than compensated me for the dangers and toils encountered in the public service, as well as for the privations in being so long separated from my family and friends; yet there are circumstances connected with my operations in that country which I can never forget, and which I must always think of with feelings of the deepest sorrow and regret.

I left Mexico after it was determined the column under my orders was to act on the defensive, and after the capital of the enemy had fallen into our hands, and their army dispersed, on a short leave of absence, to visit my family, and to attend to some important private affairs, which could not well be arranged without my being present, and which had been too long neglected. After reaching New Orleans, I informed the Secretary of War that should my presence in Mexico be deemed necessary at any time, I was ready to return, and that a communication on that or any other subject connected with my public duties would reach me if addressed to this place. I therefore feel bound to remain here, or in the vicinity, until the proper authorities at Washington determine what disposition is to be made of or with me. Under this state of things I do not expect to have it in my power to visit Kentucky, although it would afford me much real pleasure to mix once more with my numerous relatives and friends in that patriotic State, to whom I am devotedly attached; as well as again to visit, if not the place of my nativity, where I was reared from infancy to early manhood. And let me assure you I duly appreciate your kind invitation to visit you at your own hospitable home, and should anything occur which will enable me to avail myself of it, I will embrace the opportunity with much real pleasure.

I regret to say, I found my family, or rather Mrs. Taylor, on my return, in feeble health, as well as my affairs in any other than a prosperous condition; the latter was, however, to be expected, and I must devote what time I can spare, or can be spared from my public duties, in putting them in order as far as I can do so.

Should circumstances so turn out as will induce you to visit Washington the present winter, I trust you will take every precaution to protect yourself while traveling from the effects of the severe cold weather you must necessarily encounter in crossing the mountains, particularly so after having passed several of the last winters in the South.

The letter which you did me the honor to address to me, referred to, reached me on the eve of my leaving Monterey to return to the United States, and was at once replied to, which reply I flatter myself reached you shortly after writing your last communication; in which I stated, although I had received some letters from individuals in Kentucky, calculated, or perhaps intended, to produce unkind feelings on my part toward you, even admitting such was the case, their object has not been accomplished in the slightest degree, and I hope it will never be the case.

Please present me mostly kindly to your excellent lady, and wishing you and yours continued health and prosperity, I remain, with respect and esteem, etc.

DANIEL DRAKE