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 anothercomforting one another." Even now it is not uncommon for the settlers in Indiana and Illinois to travel one hundred miles in their waggons 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.

Gregarious animals are by nature inoffensive. The cruel and the savage live apart, and in solitude; but the gregarious, upheld and stimulated by each other, become formidable. So it is with man.

I was told that the scene would be much more interesting and exciting after the lamps were lighted; 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 is 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,

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 anothercomforting one another." Even now it is not uncommon for the settlers in Indiana and Illinois to travel one hundred miles in their waggons 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.

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CHAPTER XII.

LEXINGTON, the capital of the State, is embosomed in the very heart of the vale of Kentucky. This vale was the favourite huntingground 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

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 borders on the Mississippi. But all the rest of the Kentucky land is by no means equal in richness of soil to that of this valley. There are about ninety counties in the State, of which about thirty are of rich land; but four of them, namely, Fayette, Bourbon, Scotts, and Woodford, are the finest. The whole of these four counties are held by large proprietors, who graze and breed stock to a very great extent, supplying the whole of the Western States with the best description of every kind of cattle. Cattle-shows are held every year, and high prizes awarded to the owners of the finest beasts which are there produced. The State of Kentucky, as well as