Bank Lick, Kentucky [pp. 65]

4
THE
LADIES' RE POSITORY.
MARCH, 1849.
BANK LICK, KENTUCKY.
THE engraving for March is a very fair one, we
think, though not equal to the one for February,
which was one of Mr. Smilie's best.
Bank Lick is only a few miles from the Queen
City, where we hold our lodgings; and yet we are
totally unable to describe the scene of the picture,
never having been at the "lick" since the last mastodon salted his appetite at those springs.
There is one thing, however, in this picture,
which we can speak of with certainty. It is a fair
sample of western river scenery. The reader will
perceive, that there is a newness, a freshness, a
coolness about it, which, in every sense, is really
western. No two things can be more unlike, which
are of the same kind or genus, than an eastern and
western landscape. The one appears old, venerable, highly ornamented by art, variegated by strokes
of genius, and abounding with the evidences of
wealth and taste; the other is natural, uncultivated, wild, broad if not boundless in extent, magnificent in general outline, but unfinished in its parts,.
with Nature always glorying in her lavish gifts,
and with the smallest interference from the hand
of art. Bank Lick is, consequently, a western
scene throughout.
These "licks" used to be great places, in olden
times, for deer-shooting, and similar sports. The
deer, coming down to these salt spots, for the purpose of "licking" the salt water oozing from the
ground, were shot in great numbers by the early
settlers of the west.
It has often been inquired, why did the Creator
fill the world's great forests with wild animals,
which have so impeded the progress of civilization
from age to age? There is sophistry cunningly
covered up in that interrogation. It is clandestinely assumed, that the existence of wild animals has retarded the advancement of civilization,
whereas the contrary is the fact. The French infidels, we know, about the time of the Revolution
in France, industriously labored this question, as
an objection to the doctrines of a Providence and a
God; but, like all other skeptical objections to
Christianity, it is as shallow as it is false. The
truth is, the wild-wood animals have been the chief
means of advancing the march of the human race
VoL. IX.-5
into the great primeval forests of the world. They
are God's fatted cattle, fed from nature's granaries
and leaf-covered stalls, filling the desert wilderness
with meat; and thousands of colonies, for thousands
of years, have successively lived upon this prepared
bounty of Heaven, when taking possession of new
countries, until they could bring a more certain
support from a cultivation of the soil. Without
them, including the beasts of the forests and the
birds of the air, it would have been literally impossible to people the world at all; for the berries, and
the natural fruits of the earth, though contributing
to the same purpose, would not have been sufficient
for this end.
"But there are many of these animals," says the
objector, "which man would not willingly eat."
True enough, not very willingly, unless at the starving point, when they would be quite "savory" to
his taste; but then they all make good eating to
those other animals, whose flesh does suit the more
delicate taste of man. "But this assumes," adds the
objector, "that man is a flesh-eating animal himself."
Most certainly it does; for most certainly he is a
carniverous being. His teeth, his stomach, the necessities of every fibre of his body, all require him
to be an eater of flesh, in spite of all the Grahamism on earth.
But a truce to this. What say you, reader, of
those fishermen? They look very much like a
couple of my clerical friends, who, last summer,
went up to the "lick" to catch a few baskets full
of fish. They importuned "the Editor" to go with
them; but he was too incredulous to dream of luck
in that business. They laughed at his want of
faith, and came back at night, after a hard day's
work in the rain, with one entire fish, which their
"basket boy" caught, perhaps, with a pin hook!
Do you think they laughed at his highness, "the
Editor," any more? We think not.
This picture was drawn from a painting by one
of our Cincinnati artists, G. N. FRANKENSTEIN, whose
abilities as a painter have been demonstrated by
many productions of rare execution. In our next
number we shall give two fine pictures-one, a view
of a New England village, the site of the largest
sythe factory on earth; the other, young Safford,
the great mathematical wonder.
I