Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/215

 About a mile from Kentucky I left the Danville road, and took that of Harrod's Burgh,[44] to go to General Adair,[45] to whom Dr. Ramsey of Charleston had given me a letter of recommendation. I arrived at his house the same day. I crossed Dick's River, which is not half so broad as the Kentucky, but is extremely pleasant at this season of the year. Its bed is uniformly hollowed out by nature, and seems cased with stone. Part of the right bank, opposite to the place where they land, discovers a beautiful rock of a chalky substance, more than two hundred and fifty feet in height. The stratum forms one continued mass, which does not present the smallest interval, and which is only distinguished by zones and parallels of a bluish cast, the colour of which contrasts with the whiteness of the towering pile. On leaving its summit, numerous furrows, hollowed {139} in the rock, very near together, and which seem to run ad infinitum, are seen at different heights. These furrows have visibly been formed by the current of the river, which at distant epochs had its bed at these various levels. Dick's River, like the Kentucky, experiences, in the spring, an extraordinary increase of water. The stratum of vegetable