Happy Sunday night/Monday morning Lexington, KY. I hope everyone has had a great weekend and is looking forward to a great work week!
The summer weather is beautiful and great if you are able to get out the pool or golf course.
Lexington is the most beautiful city on Earth, here is an intro to the "history of Lexington KY" (read more here: http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924028845993/cu31924028845993_djvu.txt):
The first settlers of Lexington found here a well, regularly
and artificially built with stone,* a domestic convenience
unknown among the American Indians, and they plowed
up curious earthen vessels,! such as could only have been
manufactured by at least a semi-civilized people. In 1790,
an old lead mine, which had every appearance of having
been once worked and abandoned, was opened near this
city.t Kentucky's first historian^ tells us of stone sepul-
chres, at Lexington, built in pyramid shape, and still ten-
anted by human skeletons, as late as two years after the
siege of Bryant's Station. " They are built, " says he, " in
a way totally different from that of the Indians." Early
in this century, a large circular earthen mound, about six
feet in height, occupied a part of what is now called Spring
street, between Hill and Maxwell. It was located between
the property of Dr. Bell and the rear outbuildings of Mr.
P. Yeiser. In course of time it was leveled, and was
found to consist of layers of earth of three different colors.
In the center was discovered an earthen vessel of curious
form and a quantity of half-burnt wood.§ The mound is
supposed to have served the purpose of a sacrificial altar.
A stone mound, which stood not far from Rassell's cave, in
this county, was opened about 1815 and found to contain
human bones.*
These well-attested facts, together with the tradition re-
lated to this day of an extensive cave existing under the
city of Lexington, relieve of its improbable air the state-
ment that a subterranean cemetery of the original inhab-
itants of this place was discovered here nearly a century
ago.f In 1776, three years before the first permanent
white settlement was made at Lexington, some venturesome
hunters, most probably from Boonesborough, had their curi-
osity excited by the strange appearance of some stones they
saw in the woods where our city now stands. They removed
these stones, and came to others of peculiar workmanship,
* Morse. t Ira'ayi page 369. J Old Kentucky Gazette, 1790.
U John Filson. g Beuj. Keiser. * Prof. Eafinesque.,
t Letter to Eobt. Todd, published in 1809.
ANCIENT LEXINGTON. 3
which, upon examination, they found had been placed there
to conceal the entrance to an ancient catacomb, formed in
the solid rock, fifteen feet below the surface of the earth.
They discovered that a gradual descent from the opening »
brought them to a passage, four feet wide and seven feet
high, leading into a spacious apartment, in which were
numerous niches, which they were amazed to find occupied
by bodies which, from their perfect state of preservation,
had evidently been embalmed. For six years succeeding
this discovery, the region in which this catacomb was
located, was visited by bands of raging Indiatra and aveng-
ing whites ; and during this period of blood and passion,
the catacomb was dispelled, and its ancient mummies, prob-
ably the rarest remains of a forgotten era that man has
ever seen, were well nigh swept out of existence. But not
entirely. Some years after the red men and the settlers
had ceased hostilities, the old sepulchre was again visited
and inspected.* It was found to be three hundred feet
long, one hundred feet wide, and eighteen feet high. The
floor was covered with rubbish and fine dust, from which
was extracted several sound fragments of human limbs.
At this time the entrance to this underground cemetery
of Ancient Lexington is totally unknown. For nearly
three-quarters of a century, its silent chamber has not
echoed to a human footfall. It is hidden from sight, as
efiectually as was once buried Pompeii, and even the idea
that it ever existed is laughed at by those who walk over
it, as heedless of its near presence as were the generations
of incredulous peasants who unconsciously danced above
the long lost villa of Diomedes,
That Lexington is built upon the site of an ancient
walled city of vast extent and population, is not only evi-
dent from the facts here detailed, but the opinion becomes
almost a certainty when viewed in the light of the historic
proofs that can be produced to support the claim, that all
* Ashe.
BISTORT OF LEXINGTON.
the region round about her was at a distant period in the
past the permanent seat of a comparatively enlightened
people. As early as 1794,* it was well and widely known
that in the neighborhood of Lexington there existed two
distinctly defined fortifications furnished with ditches and
bastions. One of these ancient monuments was visited in
1820 by Rafinesque, the celebrated professor of natural
history in Transylvania University, a gentleman whose
opinions on the subject of the ancient remains in the Mis-
sissippi Valley are so often quoted by historians and so
much respected. His map and plate of the remains near
Lexington constitute one of the most valuable features of
the " Smithsonian Contributions."t He saysj of the forti-
fication already named:
"I have visited, with a friend, the ancient monument
or fortification situated about two and a half miles from
Lexington, in an easterly direction, and above the head of
Hickman creek; and we have ascertained that it is formed
by an irregular circumvallation of earth, surrounded by an
outside ditch.
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