Part 8

It takes neither the excitement of war nor the curious conditions of the far Orient to prove a man a hero of the highest type. Martial music, the roar of the cannon, the thud of the musket, and the flash of the saber have inspired many men to deeds of valor. We find incontrovertible evidence of this in every battle's record. These are accepted as facts with no fancy interwoven. But when we read of how Damon offered to stay in the place of his friend, Pythias, condemned to death, with the knowledge that if Pythias did not return by the hour appointed for the execution, he, himself, would be called upon to make the sacrifice; how he prayed that his friend would fail to come, but how that friend, by every conceivable plan, purposely came in time to accept his fate,--we sometimes wonder if any friendship could withstand such a test or any person's pledge be held in such exalted estimation.

In the early days of Kentucky, when the shrill whistle of the locomotive had not yet reverberated among the hills, when the red schoolhouse was not found in every locality, nor the moonlight schools had wiped out illiteracy among the mountaineers, there dwelt in Lewis County a man by the name of Larkin Liles. He was the hardy son of a hardy race, who hunted and trapped, lived and loved; and while he knew not a letter of the alphabet, had never attended school a day in his life, nor heard the golden rule, yet his rugged honesty and high sense of honor can never be surpassed. The "benevolent qualities of head and heart by a primeval decree are not dependent on education, for although it enlightens and enlarges the mind of man, it does not always ennoble it." So this man, versed in naught but the backwoodsman's lore, gave the world a lesson in honor.

On one occasion, when at Vanceburg in the above-named county, and while under the influence of whiskey, he became involved in a rough-and-tumble fight with very serious results. For this offense he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to serve one year in the penitentiary. It so happened that the sheriff of Lewis County at this time was a personal friend of "Jay-bird" Liles, and knew the soul of honor hidden by this rough exterior.

After leaving the courtroom, the prisoner, in a voice husky with emotion, said, "Uncle Buck,"--everyone called the sheriff of Lewis County by this title,--"Uncle Buck, won't you let me go home and get in my winter's wood and fix to have my corn crap gathered, to fatten my hogs, to keep the young-uns on? Then I's come over to Clarksburg and go with ye to the penitentiary."

Sheriff Parker asked, "How long will it take ye, Jay-bird?"

"About two weeks," he replied.

Then the magnanimity of the man shone forth,--some might say overcame the discretion of the officer,--when the sheriff replied, "Go ahead and do it." But so well did he know the pride with which "Jay-bird" Liles kept a promise, that he was as confident of his return at the promised time, as was Damon that Pythias would return.

The wood was cut, an arrangement was made concerning the crop, the good-by kiss was given to his weeping wife and helpless babes, and, feeling he was going on such a distant trip that he would never again return, Larkin Liles, just two weeks to the day and hour from the time of the above conversation, walked into the sheriff's office ready to be taken to Frankfort.

When he told "Uncle Buck" that he was ready to start, the sheriff shook his hand and told him to spend the night with him, and on the morrow they would take the boat for Maysville, and from there go by stage to Lexington, and on to Frankfort. Again "Jay-bird's" voice trembled as he thought of the disgrace of being publicly taken by the sheriff to the penitentiary; and again he made a most singular request. "Say, Uncle Buck, I'd rather not do it. You go that way; but let me take my gun and walk through the mountains to Frankfort, won't ye? I'd rather do that, and maybe I might kill some game on the road. I'll meet you on any spot, on any day you appoint."

What do you suppose the sheriff replied? Looking him straight in the eye he answered, "All right, Jay-bird, suit yourself. Frankfort lies right in yon direction; you can't miss it. When you reach Frankfort, go straight to the governor's office and tell him what you are there for, if I don't get there first."

Then this rugged mountaineer, this unlettered, unpolished son of the hills, with honor as his watchword, dressed in the primitive style of the time and place, with his trusty rifle, started over the hills, through vales, and across streams to meet the sheriff at Frankfort, one hundred and fifty miles away, where he would hear the lock snap as it closed the door that would shut him in from freedom and friends.

Early one June morning, two days later, before the people of Frankfort were abroad, a tall, gaunt, determined-looking backwoodsman, in buckskin clothes and a coonskin cap, looking as if he belonged to the days of Daniel Boone, made his way to the governor's mansion and quietly seated himself on a stone. As Governor Clark started from the mansion after breakfast, he was astonished to see this man of the mountains, who quickly inquired, "Say, Mister, be you the governor?"

"Yes, my man, I am the governor. What can I do for you?"

"Well, Governor, my name is Larkin Liles, and I come up here from Lewis County to get into the penitentiary for one year. Hed you saw anything of Buck Parker?"

Utterly astounded, Governor Clark asked, "Who is Buck Parker?"

"Why, Buck Parker is the high sheriff of Lewis County, Kaintucky. I thought everybody knowed that. We all call him 'Uncle Buck' Parker. He was to come by stage and meet me here. I walked through."

While Governor Clark was eying him and trying to realize that such unheard-of proceedings had actually happened, "Jay-bird" said anxiously, "Say, Governor, the sheriff ain't here yit, and I don't want to lose no time. Can't you let me into the penitentiary and tell Buck Parker whar he can find me when he comes?"

More astonished than ever, Governor Clark said, "Have you had your breakfast, Mr. Liles?"

With a shake of the head, "Jay-bird" said that he had traveled all night and upon reaching the city had come straight to the governor. The governor at once took him in, gave him his breakfast, and told him to go over to the capitol, until he could learn more about the case.

Ten hours later, the sheriff came by stage and soon found "Jay-bird" at the governor's office. When the sheriff introduced himself to Governor Clark, the governor immediately asked if it was a fact that this man, condemned to a year of confinement and hard work in the penitentiary, had trudged on foot alone all the way from Lewis County. When told it was just as "Jay-bird" had said, the governor, in amazement, asked, "Is the man crazy? Couldn't he have escaped?"

"Easily, and all the sheriffs, constables, and rewards could never have caught him. No, 'Jay-bird' is not simple; he is only honest." The governor was so interested he asked for all the details.

Then "Uncle Buck" told of the fight, the trial, and the conviction, of how "Jay-bird" had kept his word when permitted to go to say good-by to his loved ones, of his long life of honesty and hospitality, and of how he had begged to come alone on foot to Frankfort, rather than as a common, convicted felon.

With a heart heaving with emotion and eyes dim with tears, the executive hastily affixed his name and the seal of the commonwealth to a small piece of paper, and, handing it to Larkin Liles, said in a husky voice, "Mr. Liles, go home to your family and kiss the little ones for me. You shall never enter the penitentiary while Clark is governor of Kentucky."

THE "PRIDE OF THE PENNYRILE"[3]

It is eminently proper that the metropolis of "Jackson's Purchase" should bear a name of Indian origin. Although the greater part of Kentucky, with its fertile meadowlands, towering forests, and tangled cane-brakes, was only the hunting ground of the red men, yet all that territory in Kentucky and Tennessee lying between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers was the home of the Chickasaw Indians. This large tribe had their main town at Chickasaw Bluffs, where Memphis now stands, with a number of other settlements scattered throughout this seven million acres of fertile lands.

As Kentucky was once a part of Virginia, and as the "Old Dominion" was a British colony, this section was once claimed by Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War, Virginia, relying on the former policy of the mother country, that,

"They should take who have the power, And they should keep who can,"

allowed George Rogers Clark, in recognition of his services in the Northwest Territory, to enter several thousand acres of land, including the present site of the capital of McCracken County.

At that time there were no white settlements in this section; but as early as the year 1806 or 1807 there was a flatboat landing and woodyard at the mouth of the Tennessee River, kept by a genial Irishman named Pat Dugan. The first name given the place, and the one by which it was known for many years, was Pekin.

On October 19, 1818, through Governor Isaac Shelby and General Andrew Jackson, commissioners, the United States bought from the Chickasaw Indians their tract referred to above, which in the present state of Kentucky includes the counties of Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Marshall, and McCracken.

For many years the hero of Kaskasia, Cahokia, and Vincennes had been infirm and poor. We all remember the touching scene when the Virginia commission presented him a sword in recognition of his great services to the United States; the old soldier listened in gloomy silence for a while and, finally, thrusting the sword into the ground and breaking it, he exclaimed, "When Virginia needed a sword I found one. Now I want bread!" By the treaty just mentioned the title of George Rogers Clark was made clear, but as he had died a few months previous to this his tract passed to his brother, General William Clark, of St. Louis, who had accompanied Meriwether Lewis on the noted Lewis and Clark Expedition.

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 "Paducheyeh," 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 Rivière" pass 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 assumed 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 Cumberland.

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 Hancock 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 Knobs, some with a base one hundred and fifty yards in diameter, two hundred feet high, and entirely destitute 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 knobs 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 quantities 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 unsurpassed 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 Cumberland River in its passage through Whitley County has a perpendicular fall of more than sixty feet, forming Cumberland 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 pass 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.

Here no ray of sunshine 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 massive 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 Washington'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.

HOW REELFOOT LAKE WAS FORMED

About two o'clock in the morning of December 16, 1811, the inhabitants of southwestern Kentucky, especially those in Fulton County, were aroused and alarmed by a most destructive earthquake shock that shook the Mississippi Valley throughout. It extended all along the Ohio beyond Pittsburgh, passed the Alleghenies, and died on the far-away coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

The first sign of the catastrophe was distant, rumbling sounds, succeeded by continued discharges as of unnumbered pieces of artillery. Then the earth rocked, chasms yawned, columns of coal, sand, and water shot up, while electric flashes, shooting through the otherwise impenetrable darkness, added horror to the scene. Twenty-seven distinct shocks were experienced before dawn. Then shock followed shock, the land was overshadowed by a dense, black cloud of vapor to which the light imparted a purplish tinge, but no sunbeam penetrated the pall that overhung all.