lassies, these, with soft, pleasant voices, each with her
market-basket over her arm, going homeward from shopping. It would
be interesting to know their story--what it is that brings these
daughters of a brighter world here into this valley of the living
death.

Two hundred yards farther, where the road forks, and the one at the
right hand ascends to the small hamlet of Big Bone Lick, there is
an interesting picture beneath the way-post: a girl in a blue calico
gown, her face deep hidden in her red sunbonnet, sits upon a chestnut
mount, with a laden market-basket before her; while by her side,
astride a coal-black pony, which fretfully paws to be on his way, is a
roughly dressed youth, his face shaded by a broad slouched hat of the
cowboy order. They have evidently met there by appointment, and are
so earnestly conversing--she with her hand resting lovingly, perhaps
deprecatingly, upon his bridle-arm, and his free hand nervously
stroking her horse's mane, while his eyes are far afield--that they do
not observe us as we pass; and we are free to weave from the incident
any sort of cracker romance which fancy may dictate.

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 vertebrae as camp stools and tables. But in our own
day, there ar