Stories of Old Kentucky Part 12

A few years after, General William Clark came to the little town of Pekin accompanied by an Indian chief who had become a friend of his while on his Western trip.

In Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," he speaks of a tribe of Indians called "Paducahs." In the "Handbook of American Indians" we find that the "Paducahs" belonged to the warlike Comanches, this being the name given them by the Spaniards. There is in Texas a small town of about one thousand five hundred inhabitants, named Paducah from this tribe of Indians.

Paducah, Kentucky, is named, not from the tribe, but from an individual Indian. In his diary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, General William Clark speaks more than once of the kindness shown his party by a scattered branch of the Paducahs, and of how their chief became his friend. Dr. Catlin tells, in speaking of the tribes of the West, of a chief of the Mandans, Indians that often intermarried with the Comanches, named "Pad.u.c.h.eyeh," meaning "tall or upstanding chestnut tree." Whether or not he was the one who became the friend of General Clark we do not know, but when the Comanches came southward, their old chief, called Paducah, went to St. Louis, and then came with General Clark on a visit to the town of Pekin, where he died with fever, and was buried near Third Street just beyond Tennessee.

A log cabin was placed around his grave, and pioneer residents have told of a party of Indians coming from beyond the Mississippi and holding ceremonies over Paducah's grave. These were Comanches, or to use their tribal name, Paducahs.

Whether the individual name of the old chief who had befriended General Clark was one of the many varied spellings of Paducah, or whether General Clark called him by his tribal name instead, we know not. Yet there was a real chief in recognition of whose kindness the "Pride of the Pennyrile" was named Paducah.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] For some of the facts in this chapter, the author is indebted to Mr.

Irvin S. Cobb.

LUCY JEFFERSON LEWIS

As travelers on the waters of "La Belle Riviere" pa.s.s between the historic town of Smithland and the unpretentious hamlet of Birdsville, few are aware that they are within a mile or two of the grave of a younger sister of the writer of our Magna Charta.

Though Lucy Jefferson Lewis was the sister of the man to whom we owe our American decimal coinage system, our statute for religious freedom, our Declaration of Independence, the University of Virginia, and the Democratic party; though she was the wife of Dr. Charles L. Lewis, brother of the noted Meriwether Lewis; and though she was blessed with wealth, culture, love, and family; yet to-day she sleeps in an unmarked grave in Livingston County.

Filled with enthusiasm for the then far West, the Lewis family, in 1808, ten years after Livingston County was formed, moved to Kentucky, purchased a tract of land about three miles from Smithland, and on a lonely, rocky hill overlooking the beautiful Ohio, raised their rooftree, and with their Virginia slaves, began a home in the wilderness.

Some say that Dr. Lewis came with his wife, children, and servants; others, that he did not come until eight or nine months after the family arrived. Be that as it may, all agree that he was unsociable and moody, and that he soon tired of his primitive abode and left, they supposed, for his former Virginia home. All alone with her children and servants in the Western wilds, is it any marvel that Lucy Jefferson Lewis should sigh for the happy home of her youth?

On a lonely, rocky promontory, where she could gaze far up the river, she would sit day after day, straining her eyes to see if there might be a "broadhorn" coming with news from her dearly beloved Virginia. If one was spied, a servant was at once sent out in a small boat to bring to her the long-wished-for papers. But this rare Virginia flower did not long survive transplantation, and in 1811 she was buried near her new home, with only a rough stone from the hillside to mark her last resting place.

Only a few short months afterward, there was enacted by two of her sons, Lilburn and Isham, a most revolting tragedy. Then Lilburn died and it is said Isham, under an a.s.sumed name, entered the volunteer army and fell at the battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815.

The other son and three daughters left on file, in the county clerk's office at Smithland, a writing dated August 29, 1814, conferring upon Thomas Jefferson the power of attorney to recover certain lands for them in Albemarle County, Virginia. They subsequently married, moved into other states, and nothing is left to mark the homestead but a pile of rocks. Three sunken places, overgrown with the wild wood, show the last resting place of Lucy Jefferson Lewis, her son Lilburn, and his wife, while the cold autumnal winds, sighing through the treetops, chant a sad requiem above the lonely, deserted spot.

NATURAL CURIOSITIES IN KENTUCKY

Kentucky, rich in minerals, fertile soil, varied forests, and diversified products, is also a land where Nature has been lavish with her curiosities.

Some of the most important natural curiosities are the following: In Boone County there is Split Hill, where a deep zigzag path of great extent has been formed; in Breckinridge County there is Sinking Creek, a stream so large and powerful that it drives machinery the entire year; at a point about six miles from its source it disappears and shows no trace for more than five miles, when it reappears and flows into the Ohio. As early as 1847, a Mr. Huston utilized, for a mill erected on this stream, a natural dam of rock, eight feet in height and forty feet in width.

In Carter County there are also two smaller streams that flow for some distance underground. In the same county, in early days, there was an artesian well that threw up a jet, about the size of a barrel, to a height of four feet.

Christian County contains also some sinking streams, forks of Little River, beside Pilot Rock, which rests upon elevated ground, has a comparatively level summit, covers about one half acre of ground, and is about two hundred feet high. This county also contains a natural bridge, which crosses a deep ravine with an artistic arch of sixty feet, and is thirty feet in height.

Picturesque falls, ninety feet high, are found in Clinton County, while "Rock House," forty feet high and about sixty feet square, is located in c.u.mberland.

In Edmonson County, besides the wonderful Mammoth Cave, there is "Dismal Rock," almost perpendicular and one hundred and sixty-three feet high.

In Grant County, for many years an object of great curiosity, was an immense poplar tree, nine feet in diameter; it is said a man on horseback, after it lay prostrate, could barely touch the top of the trunk with the tips of his fingers.

A natural fortification, a circular tableland, from fifty to one hundred and twenty-five feet high, impossible of ascent except in one place, is an object of great interest in Hanc.o.c.k County.

In Jessamine County, amid awful grandeur and gloom, the Devil's Pulpit is found, with a total elevation of three hundred feet.

In Lincoln County the k.n.o.bs, some with a base one hundred and fifty yards in diameter, two hundred feet high, and entirely dest.i.tute of vegetation, attract great attention.

Mantel Rock, or Natural Bridge, in Livingston County, in picturesqueness rivals the far-famed Natural Bridge of Virginia. This rock, resting against the hillside, is eight and three fourths feet thick and twenty feet wide; its arch spans two hundred and twenty feet. One of the paintings that attracted most attention in the Kentucky building at the St. Louis World's Fair was the artistic reproduction of this picturesque place by Mrs. Georgia McGrew Edwards.

In Lyon County, near Eddyville, 1848, several men explored a cavern for half a mile, where a large stream of water, an underground river, was found to be flowing.

About three miles from Benton, in Marshall County, on a high hill, there is a lake about sixty yards in diameter, whose depth is unknown; its waters neither rise nor fall, but stand about fifty feet above the bed of the creek below.

In Meade County, between Salt River and Sinking Creek, are several k.n.o.bs and groves that the pioneers used as points of observation from which to detect the movements of the Indian parties just after they crossed to the south side of the Ohio River.

Bardstown, in Nelson County, is built on an elevation under which is a natural tunnel, several feet in diameter, of circular form, reaching from the eastern to the western extremity of the eminence.

Owen County has several objects of interest, among them being Point of Rocks, about seventy-five feet high, overhanging Deep Hole, whose depth has never been ascertained.

In Rockcastle County, Bee Cliff rears its summit three hundred and fifty-five feet above the river; there are also a number of saltpeter caves where large quant.i.ties of saltpeter were manufactured during the War of 1812. The largest, called Great Saltpeter Cave, with its many rooms, some of which cover an area of several acres, with its subterranean river and weird grandeur, is a rival in all respects but size to the noted Mammoth Cave of Edmonson County. The Fall Cliffs, at some points three hundred feet in height, are unsurpa.s.sed in grandeur.

Among the places of interest in Union County there is, standing upon level bottom land, a rock two feet thick, twenty feet wide, and fifty feet high which, on account of its spur resembling the horn of an anvil, is called Anvil Rock. In the same county a large flat rock, deeply indented with impressions of the human foot of various sizes as well as the distinct footprints of the dog is found.

In Warren County, Wolf Sink, one hundred and fifty feet wide by three hundred feet long and in depth varying from twenty feet on the south side to one hundred and fifty feet on the north side, is an interesting place.

The c.u.mberland River in its pa.s.sage through Whitley County has a perpendicular fall of more than sixty feet, forming c.u.mberland Falls, a picturesque cascade, the roar of which can be heard sometimes for more than twelve miles both above and below the cataract. Behind the sheet of falling water one can pa.s.s nearly across the river bed.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST NATURAL WONDER

In Edmonson County, near Green River, was discovered in 1809, by a Mr.

Hutchins, while in pursuit of a wounded bear, that matchless subterranean palace,--the Mammoth Cave.

It consists, not of one chamber, but of many magnificent rooms, winding avenues, towering domes, bottomless pits, picturesque cataracts, mystic rivers, gloomy seas, and crystal lakes, on five different levels.

Geologists agree that this immense cavern was carved out of the limestone ages ago, by both the mechanical and chemical action of the water. Viewing the huge columns that have been formed by depositing the almost infinitesimal amount of lime dissolved from the rock, one stands in awe at the thought of the great span of time required for this marvelous work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A view in the Mammoth Cave.]

Here no ray of suns.h.i.+ne lights up the darkness; here no sound breaks the silence; here no seasons come and go; here no living creature--save the torpid bat, the sluggish lizard, the silent cricket, the shy rabbit-like rat, and eyeless fish--exists.

Among the many picturesque spots in this cave are the Bridal Altar, formed of several pillars grouped into arches; the Old Arm Chair, in which Jenny Lind once sat and sang; the Giant's Coffin, a ma.s.sive stone, forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and nine feet thick, that fell, ages ago, from above; Audubon Avenue; the Bat Chamber, where thousands of bats spend the winter clinging to the ceiling, in most places smooth and white as if made by a master hand; the Devil's Arm Chair, a large stalagmite in which is a comfortable seat; Napoleon's Breast Works; Lover's Leap, and Gatewood's Dining Table; Fat Man's Misery, River Hall, and Bacon Chamber, the last looking like a part of a pork-packing house; the Dead Sea, the Corkscrew, the Holy Sepulcher, Martha Was.h.i.+ngton's Statue, Shelby's Dome; the rivers Lethe, Echo, and Styx; and last the Star Chamber, sixty feet wide, seventy feet high, and four hundred feet long. Here the guide leaves you in absolute darkness for a while, until from his vantage ground he so illuminates the high ceiling that when you look upward, the heavens seem studded with stars; a comet with its blazing tail appears, clouds cross over, midnight with its utter darkness comes, and finally day begins to dawn.