Prodigious remains of animals are found near the salines. Whole trees
are discovered completely petrified; and to crown the list of wonders,
in turning up the soil, graves are opened, which contain the skeletons
of figures, who must have been of mature age. Paintings of the sun,
moon, animals, and serpents, on high and apparently inaccessible cliffs,
out of question the work of former ages, in colors as fresh as if
recently laid on, and in some instances, just and ingenious in
delineation, are a subject of untiring speculation. Even the streams in
this region of wonders have scooped out for themselves immensely deep
channels hemmed in by perpendicular walls of limestone, sometimes
springing up to a height of three or four hundred feet. As the traveller
looks down upon the dark waters rolling so far beneath him, seeming to
flow in a subterranean world, he cannot but feel impressions of the
grandeur of nature stealing over him.

It is not to be supposed, that persons, whose sole object in entering
the country was to explore it, would fail to note these surprising
traces of past races, the beautiful diversity of the aspect of the
country, or these wonders of nature exhibited on every hand. Being
neither incurious nor incompetent observers, their delineations were
graphic and vivid.

"Their teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence, that is in the starry sky;
The sleep, that is among the lonely hills."

They advanced into Kentucky so far, as to their imaginations with the
fresh and luxuriant beauty of its lawns, its rich cane-brakes and
flowering forests. To them it was a terrestrial paradise for it was