What greatly aggravated this distressing state of things, Kentucky was still but a district of Virginia, hence powerless to use to the full extent the means of self-defense which otherwise had lain within her reach; while the seat of government was so remote from the scenes of disorder that the mother State could succor her infant settlements scarcely more than had they lain on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, instead of the Alleghenies. Thus trammeled, Kentucky could do little more than, like a tethered bison, butt at the dangers which year in and year out beset her on every side. To be sure, conventions composed of her best men, and having for their object her erection into a separate State of the Union, had been for the last three years, and for the next three years continued to be, as frequent as camp-meetings--quite as demonstrative too, and noisy, and quite as much to the purpose, so far as concerned the object in view. Why, does not beseem us here to inquire. Finally, just as the danger was over and gone, and the last hand of hostile Indians that ever raised the war-whoop in the land of the "Dark and Bloody Ground" had been driven across the Ohio, Kentucky was untrammeled, and suffered to rear her bleeding front among the mighty sisterhood of States--an independent, sovereign part of the independent, sovereign whole, as the phrase should go, until the great rebellion should call for new constructions and clear definitions. Thenceforth for twenty years the fiery lines of war receded fitfully northward, till stayed at the Battle of the Thames, quenched in the life-blood of the heroic, the high-minded, the hapless Tecumseh. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE How Big Black Burl Figured in the Paradise 9 CHAPTER II. How Little Bushie Figured in the Paradise 17 CHAPTER III. How Big Black Burl and Bushie Figured in Each Other's Eyes 26 CHAPTER IV. How Somebody was Lost in the Paradise 39 CHAPTER V. How Grumbo Figured in the Paradise 46 CHAPTER VI. How Big Black Burl Figured on the War-path by Day 52 CHAPTER VII. How Big Black Burl Figured on the War-path by Night 60 CHAPTER VIII. How Big Black Burl Figured in a Quandary 67 CHAPTER IX. How Big Black Burl Figured in Ambush 73 CHAPTER X. How Big Black Burl Figured in the Fight 81 CHAPTER XI. How Little Bushie Figured in the Fight 90 CHAPTER XII. How Big Black Burl and Grumbo Figured After the Fight 99 CHAPTER XIII. How Big Black Burl Figured in his Triumph 109 CHAPTER XIV. How Big Black Burl Figured in Oratory 117 CHAPTER XV. How Big Black Burl Sewed it Up in his War-cap 127