Cave Hill Cemetery, prettily laid out on the hills to the eastward. The city has an environment of pleasant parks, and three fine bridges span the Ohio in front, crossing to the suburban towns of Jeffersonville and New Albany over on the Indiana shore. Five miles east of Louisville lived General Zachary Taylor, old "Rough and Ready," who commanded the army of the United States in the conquest of Mexico, and died while President in 1850. He is buried near his old home.

LOUISVILLE TO NASHVILLE.

Southward from Louisville runs the railroad to Nashville, and proceeding along it, Green River is reached, which, flowing northwest, falls into the Ohio near Evansville. At the Green River crossing were fought the initial skirmishes of the Civil War, in various conflicts between the western armies of Generals Buell and Bragg in 1862. Farther southwestward is Bowling Green, now a quiet agricultural town, but then a location at the crossing of Barren River of great strategic importance, it having been occupied and strongly fortified by the Confederates in 1861, to defend the approach to Nashville. But after the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in February, 1862, the Confederates being outflanked abandoned the town, retiring southward. Between these places, and adjoining Green River, about ninety miles south of Louisville, is the famous Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. This is the largest known cavern in the world, extending for a distance of nine or ten miles, the various avenues that have been explored having a total length approximating two hundred miles. The carboniferous limestones of Kentucky, in which the cave is located, occupy an area of eight thousand square miles, and the geologists estimate that there are probably a hundred thousand miles of open caverns beneath this surface. There is a hotel near the cave entrance, and it has several thousand visitors annually. Its mouth is reached by passing down a rocky ravine through the forest, and is a sort of funnel-shaped opening about a hundred feet in diameter at the top, with steep walls fifty feet high. A hunter accidentally discovered the cave in 1809, and for years afterwards it was entered chiefly to obtain nitre for the manufacture of gunpowder, especially during the War of 1812, the nitre being found in deposits on the cave floor, mainly near the entrance, and owing its origin to the accumulation of animal remains, mostly of bats, in which the cave abounds. It subsequently became a resort for sight-seers, and yields its owners a good revenue.

Upon entering the cave, the first impression is made by a chaos of limestone formations, moist with water oozing from above, and then is immediately felt what is known as "the breath" of the cave. It has pure air and an even temperature of 52° to 56°, and this is maintained all the year round. In summer the relatively cooler air flows out of the entrance, while in winter the colder air outside is drawn in, and this makes the movement of "the breath," at once apparent from the difference of temperature and currents of wind when passing the entrance. For nearly a half-mile within are seen the remains of the Government nitre-works, the vats being undecayed, while ruts of cart-wheels are traceable on the floor. The Rotunda is then entered, a hall seventy-five feet high and one hundred and sixty feet across, beginning the main cave, and out of which avenues lead in various directions. The vast interior beyond contains a succession of wonderful avenues, chambers, domes, abysses, grottoes, lakes, rivers, cataracts, stalactites, etc., remarkable for size and extraordinary appearance, though they are neither as brilliant nor as beautiful as similar things seen in some other caves. But their gigantic scale is elsewhere unsurpassed. There are eyeless fish and crawfish, and a prolific population of bats. In the subterranean explorations there are two routes usually followed, a short one of eight miles and another of twenty miles. Various appropriate names are given the different parts of the cave, and curious and interesting legends are told about them, one of the tales being of the "Bridal Chamber," which got its name because an ingenious maiden who had promised at the deathbed of her mother she would not marry any man on the face of the earth, came down here and was wedded. Bayard Taylor wrote of this Mammoth Cave, "No description can do justice to its sublimity, or present a fair picture of its manifold wonders; it is the greatest natural curiosity I have ever visited, Niagara not excepted."

Seventy miles south of Bowling Green, at the Cumberland River, and occupying the hills adjoining both banks, is Nashville, the capital and largest city of Tennessee, having eighty thousand population. It is in an admirable situation, and is known as the "Rock City," its most prominent building, the State Capitol, standing upon an abrupt yet symmetrical hill, rising like an Indian mound and overlooking the entire city, its high tower seen from afar. In the grounds are the tomb of President James K. Polk, who died in 1849 and whose home was in Nashville, and a fine bronze equestrian statue of General Andrew Jackson, the most famous Tennesseean, whose residence, the Hermitage, was eleven miles to the eastward. Nashville has considerable manufactures, but is chiefly known as the leading educational city of the South. The most prominent institution is the Vanderbilt University, attended by eight hundred students and endowed by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt with $1,000,000, his colossal statue, unveiled in 1897, standing on the campus. The University of Nashville, originally begun by charter of the North Carolina Legislature as an Academy in 1785, has four hundred students in its Normal Department, which trains teachers for Southern schools, and as many more in its Medical Department. There are also the Fisk University, Roger Williams University, and Central Tennessee College, all endowments for colored students and having about thirteen hundred in attendance. The city has various other educational institutions and public buildings, and in the southwestern suburbs is the famous Belle Meade stock-farm, where was bred Iroquois, the only American horse that was a winner of the English Derby. Nashville was in the midst of the Civil War, and four miles to the northward is a National Cemetery with over sixteen thousand soldiers' graves. The great battle of Nashville was fought just south of the city December 15 and 16, 1864. In November of that year General Sherman had captured Atlanta, Georgia, to the southeast, and the Confederate General Hood, who had lost it, marched in Sherman's rear northward and began an invasion of Tennessee, advancing upon Nashville and forcing General George H. Thomas to fall back within its fortifications south of the Cumberland. For two weeks little was done, the weather preventing, but Thomas suddenly attacked, and in the two days' battle worsted Hood and put his army to flight, pursuing them over the boundary into Alabama, where the remnants escaped across the Tennessee River, a demoralized rabble. Hood's army being thus destroyed, Sherman, who had been waiting at Atlanta, began his famous march to the sea.

The Ohio River below Louisville passes Evansville, the chief town of southwestern Indiana, having sixty thousand people and a large trade. A short distance beyond, the Wabash River flows in, the boundary between Indiana and Illinois. Shawneetown in southern Illinois and Paducah in Kentucky are passed, and the Ohio River finally discharges its waters into the Mississippi at Cairo, the southern extremity of Illinois, the town being built upon a long, low peninsula protruding between the two great rivers, around which extensive levees have been constructed to prevent inundation. The place has about twelve thousand