ut of the needs of the times. When they providentially
sprang up in Kentucky, the frontier was sparsely settled, most people
living miles away from any church. Such churches as were built were
small and could accommodate only a few persons, and preaching services
were often weeks apart.

The revivals of genuine religion which usually attended these
gatherings were much needed in the backwoods. Most of the settlers were
honest, law-abiding persons, who had sought to improve their means by
emigrating to this western country; but many of the vicious
off-scouring of the older settlements also went west to hide their
crimes or to commit new ones. Rogues' Harbor was only an extreme type
of many law-defying places. Murderers, thieves, gamblers, defaulters
and their kind put life in peril, and threatened the moral and social
order of the state. These camp meetings strengthened and encouraged
good people, reformed many bad men and women, and thus became a saving
leaven of righteousness.

And what a place for a camp meeting was the Kentucky forest. What
nature poet can do justice to such sylvan loveliness as we find in the
"Blue Grass Region?" The pen must be dipped in the juices of that
Edenic vegetation and tinted with the blue of that arching sky to
record such beauty. What stately trees! They seemed like pillars in
God's own temple. The rich, warm limestone soil gave birth to trees in
form and variety scarce equaled in the world. Here grew in friendly
fellowship and rivalry the elm, ash, hickory, walnut, wild cherry,
white, black and read oak, black and honey locust, and many others.
Their lofty branches interlocking formed a verdant roof which did not
entirely shut out the sun's rays but caused a light subdued and
impressive as the light in a Saint Paul's Cathedral.

In such a forest was pitched the camp to which Jasper Very returned.
Let me describe this old-fashioned camp ground. A large, rough shed was
erected, capable of protecting five thousand persons from wind and
rain. It was covered with clapboards and furnished with puncheon seats.
At one end a large stand was built, from which sermons were preached. A
few feet in front of this stand a plain altar rail was set, extending
the full length of the preachers' stand. This altar was called the
"mourners' bench." All around the altar a liberal supply of fresh straw
was placed upon which the worshippers knelt. On three sides of the
large shed camps or cabins of logs were