The Blue-Grass region of Kentucky, so celebrated for its beauty, never had
a better reason for feeling proud of its good-looks than on the opening
week of summer in 1882, when I for the first time cast my eyes upon the
same. May had been almost continuously damp and rainy until its very close,
so that every sort of vegetation seemed as fresh and luxuriant as possible.
The foliage of the trees – which do not often form
thickly-interlacing “woods,” but stand out alone in their
individual majesty, as if some magnificent landscape-gardener had
designedly stationed them there to form the symmetrical landmarks and
ornaments of an immense park – was brilliantly verdant; and the tall
grass, which gives its peculiar name to that section of the State, shone,
if I may say so, with the bluest green imaginable. Great fields of grain,
also, waved in the breeze, in graceful emerald undulations, up and down the
soft slopes of the hills; and whitewashed fences “far along them
shone” in the summer sunlight. Outside the towns and villages the
houses were numerous enough to keep the tourist assured that he was
traveling in a settled country; but they were so neat and trim, and withal
so scattered, as readily to harmonize with the fancy that their inhabitants
must be salaried “keepers of the Blue-Grass Park,” instead of
ordinary farmers, who tilled the soil simply for the sake of securing such
profit as they could wrest from its reluctant grasp. The time for sowing
had gone by, and the time for reaping had not come. There was no bustle or
activity in the fields, – not “a shadow of a man’s
ravage” anywhere. Nature was doing all the work; and a blessed
atmosphere of peace, prosperity, and contentment seemed to pervade the
landscape. For purposes of spectacular display the Blue-Grass Region was at
its best; and not again in a dozen years would a bicycler who sought to
explore it in summer-time be likely to be favored with as cool and
comfortable temperature as generally favored me during the eight days while
I pushed my wheel 340 m. among the Kentucky hills.