nt on the banks of a stream called Muddy river. The
tidings spread rapidly through all the stations and farm houses on the
frontier. It afforded these lonely settlers a delightful opportunity of
meeting together. They could listen for hours with unabated interest to
the religious exercises. The people assembled from a distance of forty
or fifty miles around. A vast concourse had met beneath the foliage of
the trees, the skies alone, draped with clouds by day and adorned with
stars by night, the dome of their majestic temple.

The scene, by night, must have been picturesque in the extreme. Men,
women and children were there in homespun garb; and being accustomed to
camp life, they were there in comfort. Strangers met and became friends.
Many wives and mothers obtained rest and refreshment from their
monotonous toils. There is a bond in Christ's discipleship, stronger
than any other, and Christians grasped hands in love, pledging
themselves anew to a holy life. For several days and nights, this
religious festival was continued. Time could not have been better spent.
Dwellers in the forest could not afford to take so long a journey merely
to listen to one half-hour's discourse. These men and women were earnest
and thoughtful. In the solitude of their homes, they had reflected
deeply upon life and its issues. When death occasionally visited their
cabins, it was a far more awful event than when death occurs in the
crowded city, where the hearse is every hour of every day passing
through the streets.

These scenes of worship very deeply impressed the minds of the people.
They were not Gospel hardened. The gloom and silence of the forest,
alike still by night and by day; the memory of the past, with its few
joys and many griefs; the anticipations of the future, with its
unceasing struggles, to terminate only in death; the solemnity which
rested on every countenance; the sweet melody of the hymns; the earnest
tones of the preachers in exhortation and prayer, all combined to
present a scene calculated to produce a very profound impression upon
the human mind. At this meeting, not only professed Christians were
greatly revived, but not less than a hundred persons, it was thought,
became disciples of the Savior.

Another camp-meeting was soon after appointed to meet on Desha's Creek,
a small stream flowing into the Cumberland river. The country was now
becoming more populous, and several thousand were assembled. And thus
the wo