but I had seen quite enough of it. It was
too serious to laugh at, and I felt that it was not for me to condemn.
"Cry aloud, and spare not," was the exhortation of the preacher and
certainly, if heaven was only to be taken by storm, he was a proper
leader for his congregation.

Whatever may be the opinion of the reader as to the meeting which I have
described, it is certain that nothing could be more laudable than the
intention by which these meetings were originated. At the first
settling of the country the people were widely scattered, and the truths
of the Gospel, owing to the scarcity of preachers, but seldom heard. It
was to remedy this unavoidable evil that they agreed, like the
Christians in earlier times, to collect together from all quarters, and
pass many days in meditation and prayer, "exhorting one another--
comforting one another." Even now it is not uncommon for the settlers
in Indians and Illinois to travel one hundred miles in their wagons to
attend one of these meetings,--meetings which are now too often sullied
by fanaticism on the one hand, and on the other by the levity and
infidelity of those who go not to pray, but to scoff; or to indulge in
the licentiousness which, it is said, but too often follows, when night
has thrown her veil over the scene.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

Lexington, the capital of the State, is embosomed in the very heart of
the vale of Kentucky. This vale was the favourite hunting-ground of the
Indians; and a fairer country for the chase could not well be imagined
than this rolling, well-wooded, luxuriant valley, extending from hill to
hill, from dale to dale, for so many long miles. No wonder that the
Indians fought so hard to retain, or the Virginians to acquire it; nor
was it until much blood had saturated the ground, many reeking scalps
had been torn from the head, and many a mother and her children murdered
at their hearths, that the contest was relinquished. So severe were the
struggles, that the ground obtained the name of the "Bloody Ground."
But the strife is over; the red man has been exterminated, and peace and
plenty now reign over this smiling country. It is indeed a beautiful
and bounteous land; on the whole, the most eligible in the Union. The
valley is seven hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, and,
therefore, not so subject to fevers as the States of Indiana and
Illinois, and indeed that portion of its own state which border