Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/227

 rise, in some parts, three hundred feet perpendicular, where the chalky stone is seen quite bare.

The soil in Kentucky, although irregular, is not mountainous, if we except some parts contiguous to the Ohio and on this side Virginia. The chalky stone, and abundant coal mines which lie useless, are the only mineral substances worthy of notice. Iron mines are very scarce there, and, to the best of my remembrance, but one was worked, which is far from being sufficient for the wants of the country.

The Kentucky and Green rivers empty themselves into the Ohio, after a course of three hundred miles; they fall so low in summer time, that they are forded a hundred and fifty miles from their embouchure; but in the winter and spring they experience such sudden and strong increases that the waters of the Kentucky rise about forty feet in four-and-twenty hours. This variation is still more remarkable in the secondary rivers which run into it; the latter, {157} though frequently from ten to fifteen fathoms broad, preserve such little water in summer, that there is scarcely one of them which cannot be crossed without wetting the feet; and the stream of water that serpentines upon the bed of chalky rock is at that time reduced to a few inches in depth; in consequence of which we may look upon the Kentucky as an immense bason, which, independent of the natural illapse of its waters through the channel of the rivers, loses a great part of them by interior openings.

The Atlantic part of the United States in that respect affords a perfect contrast with Kentucky, as on the other side of the Alleghanies not the least vestige of chalky stone is seen. The rivers, great and small, however dis