the land, which conducts to the city of Lexington, is rich, cultivated, cleared, and well settled or located; and, with the exception of wooden worm fences, looks much like the best districts of Old England, only that the soil of Kentucky is better. Here are fair green pastures for cattle, and could green hawthorn fences be by magic thrown around them, while I slept an hour, I should, on awaking, fancy myself in Leicestershire. At five this evening I entered the city, the far-famed metropolis of old Kentuck.[57]
21st.—Rambled through and round the city of {191} Lexington, seated in the fairest, richest plain of Kentucky. None of the streets are yet filled up; the outline, is large, and resembling Philadelphia, particularly in the form and construction of the market, which is built over a small rivulet, now quite dry, and concealed by the market, sheds, and structures. Unfortunately for this city there is no navigable river nearer than the Kentucky river, ten miles distant, which empties itself into the Ohio. Every edifice, saving the college, a beautiful building,[58] seems filthy, neglected, and in ruins, particularly the court-house, the temple of justice, in the best square, which, with its broken windows, rotten window-frames, rotten broken doors, all ruined and spoiled for lack of paint and a nail, looks like an old abandoned bagnio, not fit to be compared with any workhouse in England. This city, it is here said, is retrograding, but in it are many comfortable abodes, and the best society of Kentucky.
Called at the seat of Squire Lidiard, a rich English
