perhaps their manners too; but their prejudices are by no means peculiar to them. After describing the buildings as having remained for more than a generation in statu quo, the writer continues:

"It is now about ten o'clock, and looking out of the window, in front of which I am writing, I can see a dozen of these industrious burghers dawdling about a barroom opposite. No sound of riot or obstreperous mirth comes thence; and were it not for the guttural chuckle that gurgles now and then from the burly person of my landlord, you would hardly know that they were talking. They are just now changing their position, to study the points of that sorry-looking nag, whose gummy lips, green with half-chewed grass, seem sagging to the sand as his hollow neck droops to the full length of his bridle. An hour hence the steed will still stand where he is, but the group around him will have advanced with the shadows some five yards beyond the eaves: you may then see them curiously grouped upon the clump of logs which form a primitive kind of stile to the fence before the door, and the morning mist, which still hangs upon the hills around, having by that time disappeared, they will be in less doubt about the weather.

"The appearance of two well-mounted and thoroughly-equipped travellers has caused quite a sensation in the village. The idea of persons travelling from motives of liberal curiosity cannot enter into the brains of the inhabitants: they insist upon setting down my companion and myself as Yankee pedlers; and as the familiarity of the people has already afforded us a good deal of quiet diversion, we are at no pains to dispel the illusion. A villager asked me yesterday, while looking at my fowling-piece, if I had no more of them left; while another inquired what price I "set upon the remaining one: the first question implying, I suppose, that we had been driving a trade in guns through the country; and the last presuming, as a matter of course, that a Yankee had no use for firearms. Are there any gen. tlemen, sir, among the Yankees?' asked quite a decent-looking man of me this morning. I looked at the fellow-I hope no offence, sir,' he added; I mean by gentlemen, planters and such-like, that live as gentlemen do here. If you ask for information, my friend, I have never lived among the Yankees, but'-' To be sure there are,' interrupted an old Irishman, sitting by; and two gentlemen to one to what there is here.''Well, you see, stranger, I thought they were all pedlers; but how comes you to deny your country, if it isn't after all among the leavings of Nature's work?' I answered that I was from the State of New York. And what now do you call that but a part of Yankee-land? replied this intelligent yeoman."

This part of the work before us is enlivened by anecdote and personal incident, illustrative of the manners of the people and history of the country. The idiosyncrasy of Kentuckians is marked; and their manners, as well as their language, striking,-bearing the impress of their peculiarity of mind. He who delights in studying their anomalies of character in the familiar incidents of domestic life and intercourse, will be interested in these pages on this account, rather than for any additional information as to the resources of the country, furnished in them. We mistake much if a perusal of them will not serve to dispel the errors into which many of our own people, especially in the Atlantic states, have been led, by the gross exhibitions, not to say caricatures, which it has been the labour and seeming pleasure of many tourists of late years to make, of this portion of western character. The exaggeration and buffoonery of these writers have no more resemblance to the open hearted and confiding manners, or to the startling, and sometimes extravagant,

but expressive phraseology of the true son of the west, than the pompous and studied forms of Euphuism to the terse and simple periods of Dryden. They have mixed up much that is true with more that is false, and have thus contrived to give a supremely ridiculous character to the whole. Yet as absurd as it is, these exhibitions have become as current coin, and form the basis of the popular idea of western life. Perhaps our own author may be considered as not altogether free from the charge which we lay at the door of others, especially in some pictures of drunkent profanity and uncouthness, which might advantageously be left out in future editions of the work: still he has presented, in just aspects, the unpretending nobility of mind of the great mass of the people.

The peculiarities of western character and language are the natural result, as we have before hinted, of intelligence and enterprise thrown into new situations, and directed to new purposes. The Caffrarian, placed on the banks of the Mississippi, would be in nowise different from what he is in his native land; and, on the other hand, a Parisian savant would pursue the same course of study in London as at home; but the well-informed Frenchman or Englishman, transported from his boulevards and from his docks, to the prairies of Illinois, or cane brakes of Kentucky, and left to his own resources, would in a little while develop new points, both in modes of action and thought. Those developments would gradually enlarge, until they became certain and distinctive traits of character. Such is the natural operation of an active mind, working in a different sphere from that in which it has been accustomed.

At Cumberland Gap, the point of osculation of the lines of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, and the only defile by which the Cumberland range is passed, our traveller visited the celebrated limestone cavern. Accompanied with four guides, he proceeded to the entrance to the cave,- 66 a ragged aperture, about six feet in diameter, sloping downward from the brink internally about fifteen feet," and in the face of a precipitous rock, "overhung by drooping weeds and wild flowers." Descending with lighted torches, and taking a few steps in the shallow water at the bottom, they came to a sudden turn which shut them out from the light of day. Their way now led through a deep pool, breast-high, over a floor of rock and sand, and at length terminated in a lofty and dry chamber, some fifteen feet in diameter, where they prepared a fire. The floor of this chamber shelved upward, leading to a narrow hole, called The Blast, barely large enough for the admission of a man's body, and through which the wind rushed with great force. This passage also ran upward, and introduced them, after crawling through it on their hands and knees, to a large apartment, with dome-like roof, and at least

forty-five feet in diameter. Kindling their torches from a brand of the fire, which was their only means of light through the Blast, they clambered to the top of a rocky ridge, seeming from the numerous rises and descents along their route, "to be traversing the broken summit of a mountain, with merely the roof of a cave, instead of the canopy of heaven," above them. Passing through a long narrow apartment, called The Saloon, with a "high square ceiling and firm floor of clay," they were ushered into another, which, with the rest of their exploration, is thus described.

"The Gallery of Pillars' realized all that I had ever read of those sparry halls, that lift their glistening columns and sport their fairy tracery within the bowels of the earth. The form of the grotto was so irregular that it was nearly impossible to make an estimate of its dimensions. The innumerable stalactites, sometimes pendent from the roof, and sometimes raising themselves in single columns from the floor, were so clustered together and intermingled, that the actual walls of the subterranean chamber were excluded from view; while the light of our torches, as we waved them aloft, would at one moment be reflected back from a thousand fretted points, and be lost the next in some upward crevice, that led away, the bats alone knew where. But the most striking object in this fairy cell is yet to be mentioned. It was a formation of spar resembling a frozen waterfall, that reared itself to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and ran completely across one end of the chamber. The ceiling of the grotto was about ten feet higher, but the petrifying water, which was now dripping from the hanging stalactites above, had united them here and there with the top of this marble cascade, so as to form a Gothic screen of sparry points and pillars along its otherwise smooth round summit. One of the guides succeeded with the aid of his companions in scaling the slippery elevation, and drawing his body with difficulty between the dropping pillars that knit the top of the congealed cascade to the roof of the grotto, he disappeared in perfect darkness behind the screen. A moment after it seemed as if a hundred lamps were dancing in that part of the cavern. He had merely lighted a couple of candles with which he was supplied, and placed them so as to be reflected from the minute and interlacing fretwork above.

"There was yet another chamber to be explored; and being now about half a mile from the mouth of the cave, it behooved us, if we wished to derive any benefit from our lights in returning, to expedite our movements. Passing, then, from the grotto, the uneven floor of which was partly paved with truncated columns of spar, and partly strewn with broken pillars that some barbarous hands had wrenched from their places, we crawled over huge rocks, where the roof of the cavern descended to within three or four feet of the broken floor, and came to a rugged declivity, seamed by deep and dark chasms, which rendered the descent difficult and perilous. When we had gained the bottom of this precipice and looked up, the top of the cavern was scarcely discernible by the light of our torches. A limpid brook, about a foot in depth, had here channelled its way in the smooth limestone; following it up for a few yards, a sudden turn brought us to a long semicircular gallery, about five feet in height, and hardly more in breadth. This, from the singular echoes it produced, was called 'The Music-room; and no whispering gallery could supply a more remarkable phenomenon of sound. The lowest tone of voice produced a murmur that trembled through the apartment, like the humming sound created by striking upon the wood-work of a guitar,—or rather, I may assimilate the effect produced by some tones, the bass ones particularly, to the low notes which a harp will send forth when the keys of a piano are touched near it. I was very sorry that we had not a musical instrument of some kind with us, to experiment more particularly upon these delicate and not unmelodious echoes. This room was nearly in the form of a crescent, and its smooth ceiling sloped gradually at the farther end till it touched the surface of the winding rivulet. At that point the stream became both broader and deeper; and the cavern not having been yet explored beyond this chamber, I proposed diving into the brook where it disappeared beneath the descending roof, and ascertaining whether it were not possible to rise in an open space beyond. The principal guide,

however, declared that he had already tried the experiment, and had nearly been suffocated by getting his head above water in a crevice of the dropping vault, from which it was difficult to extricate himself. We prepared, therefore, to retrace our steps; and our lights being nearly exhausted, we reduced their number to two while winding again through the devious labyrinth. After once or twice slightly missing the way, I emerged at last from this nether world, highly gratified with my subterranean wanderings."

Near Tazewell in Tennessee, he explored another of these caverns, which, from their number and seclusion, afford, it is said, work-shops for a gang of counterfeiters, who mix among the people and palm off their spurious money among the unsuspecting, and upon the unwary traveller. So impudently and cunningly do they pursue their avocation, that the very individual who communicated this information to our author, gave evidence of its correctness by subsequently passing off to him a copper dollar. By means of fleet horses, and the cavernous recesses, they manage effectually to elude apprehension.

The natural tunnel in Scott county, Virginia, a curiosity hardly less interesting than the celebrated natural bridge in Rockbridge county, and which is probably new to many of our readers, affords us the last extract which we have room to make from these volumes.

"It is a vaulted passage of two hundred yards, through a mountainous ridge, some five or six hundred feet high. The ridge lies like a connecting mound between two parallel hills, of about the same elevation as itself; and a brook, that winds through the wooded gorge between these hills, appears to have worn its way through the limestone rib that binds the two together. The cavernous passage is nearly in the form of an S. The entrance, at the upper side, is through a tangled swamp; where, in following down the stream, you come in front of a rude arch, whose great height, from the irregular face of the cliff being covered with vines and bushes, it is difficult to estimate, until you attempt to throw a stone to the top of the vault. The ceiling drops a few yards from the entrance, till, at the point where, from the peculiar shape of the cavern, the shadows from either end meet in the midst, it is not more than twenty feet high. The vault then suddenly rises, and becomes loftier and more perfect in form as you emerge from the lower end. Finally, it flares upward, so that the edges of the arch lose themselves in the projecting face of the cliff, which here rises from a gravelly soil to the height of four hundred feet; smooth as if chiselled by an artist, and naked as death. At this point, the sides of the gorge are of perpendicular rock, and for sixty or eighty yards, from the outlet of the tunnel, they slope away so gradually from its mouth as to describe a perfect semicircular wall, having the cavernous opening at the extreme end of the arc. On the left this mural precipice curves off to your rear, and sloping inwardly, impends at last immediately above your head. On the right the wall becomes suddenly broken, while a beetling crag shoots abruptly from the ruin to the height of three hundred feet above the stream that washes its base. The embouchure of the tunnel is immediately in front. Behind, the narrow dell is bounded by broken steeps hung with birch and cedar, and shaded with every tint of green, from the deep verdure of the hemlock to the paler foliage of the paw-paw and fringe-tree. A more lovely and impressive spot the light of day never shone into. The sun was in the centre of the heavens as I stood beneath that stupendous arch, watching the swallows wheeling around the airy vault above me, and yet more than half the glen was in deep shadow. I had been told, whether jestingly or not, that the place was a favourite retreat for bears and panthers; and while following down the brook a few yards, I was somewhat startled, upon casting a glance into a recess in the rocky bank above me, to meet a pair of bright eyes glaring from the bushes which sheltered the nook. But the sudden movement of drawing a pistol frightened the wild animal from its covert, and it

proved to be only an opossum, that glided along the trunk of a fallen tree and disappeared in the thickets above. I paused again and again, in retracing my steps through the sinuous vault, to admire its gloomy grandeur; and then mounted my horse, which was tethered in the swamp at its entrance. My road led immediately over the tunnel; but the thick forest on either side precluded a view from the top of the precipice, unless by approaching its edge. This it was necessary to do on foot. The glen thus viewed presents the appearance of a mere fissure in the mountainside; but the chasm is so sudden and deep that the first glance is startling when your foot presses the edge; and your eye swims when it would pierce the shadowy gorge below."

We dismiss the "Winter in the West," with warm feelings towards the author, produced in our examination of his work. Unlike the Grub street mendicants who visit our shores to gather materials for a book, which, under the pretence of giving information in relation to the operation of our political institutions upon our social system, is filled with patriotic abuse of our country and people; he seems to have travelled from motives of liberal curiosity, and with a generous determination to set down naught in malice and nothing to extenuate. He is both a scholar and a gentleman; and while he evinces a nice taste and discriminating powers, he makes both subservient to the rules of propriety. He is, too, an agreeable companion-a man who takes the "good the gods provide him❞—who

"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing;"

and who entertains us wherever we accompany him. He might have interested us in topographical details, but then we should have lost his glowing pictures, his familiar anecdote, and his critical observation of personal character. Or he might have made his work more suited than it will be found to be to the views of those, who look at a book of travel as a magazine of wonders, embodying new subjects of faith for the credulous; but this must have been done at the expense of truth and character.

It is, moreover, a source of gratulation to us, that one so well qualified as our author, has undertaken to present his countrymen with observations upon the social condition of that portion of the west in which he travelled-surveying it through the medium of American sympathies, and with a perfect knowledge of the nature of our government. However desirable it may be, to have the external developments of our national system portrayed by some indifferent master-hand-one alike uninterested in the result, whether from partiality in our favour, or from prejudice against us, or from attachment to some peculiar and different state of society-such a requirement can never be fulfilled in practice. An approximation to this result is however more. nearly to be attained by a republican than a monarchical writer. The one is more likely to be acquainted with our springs of action than the other. He is imbued with the spirit whose workings he exhibits; and is less likely to be mistaken in his conclusions.