reach; others contain only a few perches of ground. _Description of the Barrens._ But besides these prairies, there are also extensive tracts of country in this part of the Union which deserve and shall receive our notice; they are called "_Barrens_." From their appellation, "barrens," the person unacquainted with them is not to suppose them thus called from their sterility, because most of them are quite the reverse. These barrens are found in a level country, with here and there a gentle rise, only a few feet higher than the land around it. On these little rises, for they are not hills, trees grow, and grass also; but grass and weeds are the only occupants of the soil where there is no rise of ground. The soil is alluvial to greater or less depth in these barrens, though on some of the highest rises there is little or none; the lower the ground the deeper the alluvion. On these gentle rises, where there is no alluvion, we find stiff, blue clay, and no pebbles. Under the alluvial black soil, in the lower grounds, we find pebbles similar to those in the prairies, owing to similar causes. On the little ridges, wherever the land is not too moist, the oak or the hickory has taken possession, and there grows to a moderate height, in clusters. It would seem, that whenever the land had become sufficiently dry for an acorn or a hickory-nut to sprout, take root, and grow, it did so; and from one or more of these trees, in time, others have grown around them in such clusters as we now behold. Where the land is lower, the soil deeper, more moist and more fertile, the grass was too thick, and the soil too wet, for such kind of trees to grow in as were found in the immediate vicinity. Imagine, then, natural meadows, of various dimensions, and of every figure which the imagination can conceive, with here and there a gentle rise of ground, decked with a few scattering trees or a thick cluster of them, and bearing a tall, coarse grass, which is thin on the rises, but on the lower grounds thick and luxuriant; imagine, also, a rill of a reddish colour scarcely meandering through ground a little lower than the surrounding plain, and you will have a very correct idea of the appearance of these barrens. They are _generally_ (not always) found on what, in our western dialect, is called _second bottom_, and not on a level with any streams of magnitude, but rather at their sources. To mention all the counties of this State where these prairies and barrens are found, would be too tedious, and illy comport with the object which we have in view. We shall therefore content ourselves with describing those found in the north half of Fayette county, and the adjoining county of Madison, which may be said to be almost entirely one great barren of more than forty miles extent from north to south, and generally half as much in breadth from east to west. The great barren in Fayette, Madison, and, we may add, in the counties still north of them, is on land elevated from fifty