The source of Big Bone Creek is a marshy basin some fifty acres in extent, rimmed with gently-sloping hills, and freely pitted with copious springs of a water strongly sulphurous in taste, with a suggestion of salt. The odor is so powerful as to be all-pervading, a quarter of a mile away, and to be readily detected at twice that distance. This collection of springs constitutes Big Bone Lick, probably the most famous of the many similar licks in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.
The salt licks of the Ohio basin were from the earliest times resorted to in great numbers by wild beasts, and were favorite camping-grounds for Indians, and for white hunters and explorers. This one was first visited by the French as early as 1729, and became famous because of the great quantities of remains of animals which lay all over the marsh, particularly noticeable being the gigantic bones of the extinct mammoth—hence the name adopted by the earliest American hunters, "Big Bone." These monsters had evidently been mired in the swamp, while seeking to lick the salty mud, and died in their tracks. Pioneer chronicles abound in references to the Lick, and we read frequently of hunting-parties using the ribs of the mammoth for tent poles, and sections of the vertebræ as camp stools and tables. But in our own day, there are no surface evidences of this once rich treasure of giant fossils; although occasionally a "find" is made by enterprising excavators,—several bones having thus been unearthed only a week ago. They are now on exhibition in the neighboring village, preparatory to being shipped to an Eastern museum.
As we hurried back over the rolling highway, thunder-clouds grandly rose out of the west, and great drops of rain gave us moist warning of the coming storm. W—— was watching us from the cabin door, as we made the last turning in the road, and, accompanied by the farm-wife and her two daughters, came tripping down to the landing. She had been entertained in the one down-stairs room, as royally as these honest cracker women-folk knew how; seated in the family rocking-chair, she had heard in those two hours the social gossip of a wide neighborhood; learned, too, that the cold, wet weather of the last fortnight had killed turkey-chicks and goslings by the score; heard of the damage being done to corn and tobacco, by the prevalent high water; was told how Bess and Brindle fared, off in the rocky pasture which yields little else than mulleins; and how far back Towser had to go, to claim relationship to a collie. "And weren't we really show-people, going down the river this way, in a skiff? or, if we weren't show-people, had we an agency for something? or, were we only in trade?" It seems a difficult task to make these people on the bottoms believe that we are skiffing it for pleasure—it is a sort of pleasure so far removed from their notions of the fitness of things; and so at last we have given up trying, and let them think of our pilgrimage what they will.
The entire family now assembled on the muddy bank, and bade us a really affectionate farewell, as if we had been, in this isolated corner of the world, most welcome guests who were going all too soon. In a few strokes of the oars we were rounding the bend; and waving our hands at the little knot of watchers, went forth from their lives, doubtless forever.
The storm soon burst upon us in full fury. Clad in rubber, we rested under giant trees, or beneath projecting rock ledges, taking advantage of occasional lulls to push on for a few rods to some new shelter. The numerous little hillside runs which, in our journey up, were but dry gullies choked with leaves and boulders, were now brimming with muddy torrents, rushing all foam-flecked and with deafening roar into the central stream. At last the cloud curtain rolled away, the sun gushed out with fiery rays, the arch of foliage sparkled with splendor—in meadow and on hillside, the face of Nature was cleanly beautiful.
At the creek mouth, the distinguished mulatto still was fishing from his chair, and standing by his side was his wife throwing a spoon. They nodded to us pleasantly, as old friends returned. Gliding by their boat, Pilgrim was soon once more in the full current of the swift-flowing Ohio.
We are high up to-night, on a little grass terrace in Kentucky, two miles above Warsaw. The usual country road lies back of us, a rod or two, and then a slender field surmounted by a woodland hill. Fortune favors us, almost nightly, with beautiful abiding-places. In no place could we sleep more comfortably than in our cotton home.
Footnote A:[ (return) ]
So called from the Big Buffalo Lick, upon its banks.