Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1883 — The Blue-Grass Country. [ARTICLE]

The Blue-Grass Country.

The blue-grass country is reached by traversing central Virginia and Kentucky along the line of th'e picturesque Chesapeake and Ohio railway, unless, indeed, one prefers the swift and solid Pennsylvania route to Cinqinnati, and drops down to it from the north. On | this particular journey, at any rate, it was reached past the battle-fields and springs of Virginia, and up and down the long slopes of the Blue Ridge and gorges of the Greenbrier and Kanawha, ! in the wilder Alleghanies. It is found to be a little cluster of pecularily counties in the center of the State. Marked out on the map, it is like the kernel, of which Kentucky is the nut; or like one of those “pockets” of precious metals happened upon by miners in ther researches. The soil is of a rich fertility, the surface charmingly undulating. Poverty seems abolished. On every hand are evidences of thrift corresponding with the genial bounty of nature. A leading crop in times past has been hemp, and land that will grow hemp will grow anything. This is being more and more withdrawn in favor of stock-raising exclusively,, but, the tall stacks of hemp, in shape like Zulu wigwams; still plentifully dot the landscape. One drops into horse talk immediately on alighting from the train at Lexington, and does not emerge from it again until he takes his departure. It is the one subject always in order. Each successive proprietor, as he tucks you into his wagon, if you will go with him—and if you will go with him there is no limit to the courtesy he will show you—declares that now, after having seen animals more or less well in their way, he proposes to show you a horse. Fortunately there are many kinds of, perfection. He may have the besfc horse or colt of a certain age, the one which has made the best single heat, or fourth heat, or a quarter of a mile, or average at all distances, or the best stallion dr brood-mare, or the one which has done some of these things at private if not public trials. Each one has, at any rate, the colt which is going to be the great horse of the jvorld. This is an amiable vanity easily pardoned, and the enthusiasm is rather catching. A man’s stock is greatly to his credit and standing in this section while he lives, and when he dies is printed prominently among the list of his virtues.—lF. H. Bishop, in Harper's Magazine.