Like some loyal and devoted people, gathered to hail the
approach of a long-exiled and well-beloved sovereign, they crowded
upon the path over which she came, and yielded themselves with
gladness at her feet. The mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing
might be heard, and far-off murmurs of gratulation, rising from the
distant hollows, or coming faintly over the hill-tops, in accents
not the lees pleasing because they were the less distinct. That
lovely presence which makes every land blossom, and every living
thing rejoice, met, in the happy region in which we meet her now,
a double tribute of honor and rejoicing.
The "dark and bloody ground," by which mournful epithets Kentucky
was originally known to the Anglo-American, was dark and bloody
no longer. The savage had disappeared from its green forests for
ever, and no longer profaned with slaughter, and his unholy whoop
of death, its broad and beautiful abodes. A newer race had succeeded;
and the wilderness, fulfilling the better destinies of earth, had
begun to blossom like the rose. Conquest had fenced in its sterile
borders with a wall of fearless men, and peace slept everywhere in
security among its green recesses.
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