Sunday was a day set apart for hunting, fishing, horse racing, card playing, balls, dances, and all kinds of jollity and mirth. We killed our meat out of the woods, wild; and beat our meal and hominy with a pestle and mortar. We stretched a deer skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the prongs of a fork, sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and it was first-rate eating too. We raised, or gathered out of the woods, our own tea. We had sage, bohea, cross-vine, spice, and sassafras teas, in abundance. As for coffee, I am not sure that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our sugar out of the water of the maple-tree, and our molasses too. These were great luxuries in those days.

We raised our own cotton and flax. We water-rotted our flax, broke it by hand, scutched it; picked the seed out of the cotton with our fingers; our mothers and sisters carded, spun, and wove it into cloth, and they cut and made our garments and bed-clothes, etc. And when we got on a new suit thus manufactured, and sallied out into company, we thought ourselves "so big as anybody.'

Time rolled on, population increased fast around us, the country improved, horsethieves and murderers were driven away, and civilization advanced considerably. Ministers of different denominations came in, and preached through the country; then called, and is still known as the "Wilderness Road," which runs through the Rockcastle hills. Suspicion immediately fixed upon the Harpes as the perpetrators, and Captain Ballenger, at the head of a few bold and resolute men, started in pursuit. They experienced great difficulty in following their trail, owing to a heavy fall of snow, which had obliterated most of their tracks, but finally came upon them while encamped in a bottom on Green River, near the spot where the town of Liberty now stands. At first they made a show of resistance, but upon being informed that if they did not immediately surrender, they would be shot down, they yielded themselves prisoners. They were brought back to Stanford, and there examined. Among their effects were found some fine linen shirts, marked with the initials of Lankford. One had been pierced by a bullet and was stained with blood. They had also a considerable sum of money, in gold. It was afterward ascertained that this was the kind of money Lankford had with him. The evidence against them being thus conclusive, they were confined in the Stanford jail, but were afterward sent for trial to Danville, where the district court was in session. Here they broke jail, and succeeded in making their escape.

They were next heard of in Adair county, near Columbia. In passing through that county, they met a small boy, the son of Colonel Trabue, with a pillow-case of meal or flour, an article they probably needed. This boy, it is supposed, they robbed and then murdered, as he was never afterward heard of. Many years afterward, human bones, answering the size of Colonel Trabue's son at the time of his disappearance, were found in a sink hole near the place where he was said to have been murdered. The Harpes still shaped their course toward the mouth of Green River, marking their path by murders and robberies of the most horrible and brutal character. The district of country through which they passed was at that time very thinly settled, and from this reason their outrages went unpunished. They seemed inspired with the deadliest hatred against the whole human race, and such was their implacable misanthropy, that they were known to kill where there was no temptation to rob. One of their victims was a little girl, found at some distance from her home, whose tender age and helplessness would have been protection against any but incarnate fiends. The last dreadful act of barbarity, which led to their punishment and expulsion from the country, exceeded in atrocity all the others.

Assuming the guise of Methodist preachers, they obtained lodgings one night at a solitary house on the road. Mr. Stagall, the master of the house, was absent, but they found his wife and children, and a stranger, who, like themselves, had stopped for the night. Here they conversed and made inquiries about the two noted Harpes, who were represented as prowling about the country. When they retired to rest, they contrived to secure an ax, which they carried with them to their chamber. In the dead of night, they crept softly down stairs, and assassinated the whole family, together with the stranger, in their sleep, and then setting fire to the house, made their escape. When Stagall returned, he found no wife to welcome him; no home to receive him. Distracted with grief and rage, he turned his horse's head from the smoldering ruins, and repaired to the house of Captain John Leeper. Leeper was one of the most powerful men of his day, and fearless as powerful. Collecting four or five other men well armed, they mounted and started in pursuit of vengeance. It was agreed that Leeper should attack "Big Harpe," leaving "Little Harpe" to be disposed of by Stagall. The others were to hold themselves in readiness to assist Leeper and Stagall, as circumstances might require.

This party found the women belonging to the Harpes attending to their little camp by

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but the Methodist preachers were the pioneer messengers of salvation in these ends of the earth. Even in Rogues' Harbor there was a Baptist church a few miles west of my father's, and a Presbyterian congregation a few miles north, and the Methodist Ebenezer a few miles south.

Somewhere between 1800 and 1801, in the upper part of Kentucky, at a memorable place called "Cane Ridge," there was appointed a sacramental meeting by some of the Presbyterian ministers, at which meeting, seemingly unexpected by ministers or people, the mighty power of God was displayed in a very extraordinary manner; many were moved to tears, and bitter and loud crying for mercy. The meeting was protracted for weeks. Ministers of almost all denominations flocked in from far and near. The meeting was kept up by night and day. Thousands heard of the mighty work, and came on foot, on horseback, in carriages and wagons. It was supposed that there were in attendance at times during the meeting from twelve to twenty-five thousand people. Hundreds fell prostrate under the mighty power of God, as men slain in battle. Stands were erected in the woods, from which preachers of different churches proclaimed repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and it was supposed, by eye and ear witnesses, that between one and two thousand souls were happily and powerfully converted to God during the meeting. It was not unusual for one, two, three, and four to seven preachers to be addressing the listening thousands at the same time from the different stands erected for the purpose. The heavenly fire spread in almost every direction. It was said, by truthful witnesses, that at times more than one thousand persons broke out into loud shouting all at once, and that the shouts could be heard for miles around.

From this camp-meeting, for so it ought to be called, the news spread through all the Churches, and through all the land, and it excited great wonder and surprise; but it kindled a religious flame that spread all over Kentucky, and through many other states. And I may here be permitted to say, that this was the first campmeeting ever held in the United States, and here our camp-meetings took their rise.

To show the ignorance the early Methodist preachers had to contend with in the western wilds, I will relate an incident that occurred to Wilson Lee, in Kentucky:

There was in the congregation a very wicked Dutchman and his wife, both of

the road side; the men having gone aside into the woods to shoot an unfortunate traveler, of the name of Smith, who had fallen into their hands, and whom the women had begged might not be dispatched before their eyes. It was this halt that enabled the pursuers to overtake them. The women immediately gave the alarm, and the miscreants, mounting their horses, which were large, fleet and powerful, fled in separate directions. Leeper singled out the Big Harpe, and being better mounted than his companions, soon left them far behind. Little Harpe succeeded in escaping from Stagall, and he, with the rest of his companions, turned and followed the track of Leeper and Big Harpe. After a chase of about nine miles, Leeper came within gun shot of the latter and fired. The ball entering his thigh, passed through it and penetrated his horse, and both fell. Harpe's gun escaped from his hand and rolled some eight or ten feet down the bank. Reloading his rifle Leeper ran to where the wounded outlaw lay weltering in his biood, and found him with one thigh broken and the other crushed beneath his horse. Leeper rolled the horse away, and set Harpe in an easier position. The robber begged that he might not be killed. Leeper toid him that he had nothing to fear from him, but that Stagall was coming up, and could not probably be restrained. Harpe appeared very much frightened at hearing this, and implored Leeper to protect him. In a few moments Stagall appeared, and without uttering a word. raised his rifle and shot Harpe through the head. They then severed the head from the body, and stuck it upon a pole where the road crosses the creek, from which the place was then named and is yet called Harpe's Head. Thus perished one of the boldest and most noted freebooters that has ever appeared in America. Save courage, he was without one redeeming quality, and his death freed the country from a terror which had long paralyzed its boldest spirits.

The Little Harpe afterward joined the band of Mason, and became one of his most val uable assistants in the dreadful trade of robbery and murder. He was one of the two bandits that, tempted by the reward for their leader's head, murdered him, and eventually themselves suffered the penalty of the law as previously related.

whom were profoundly ignorant of the Scriptures and the plan of salvation. His wife was a notorious scold, and so much was she given to this practice, that she made her husband unhappy, and kept him almost always in a perfect fret, so that he led a most miserable and uncomfortable life. It pleased God that day to cause preaching of Mr. Lee to reach their guilty souls, and break up the great deep of their hearts. They wept aloud, seeing their lost condition, and they, then and there, resolved to do better, and from that time forward to take up the cross and bear it, be it what it might.

A Religious Encampment in the Wilderness.

The congregation were generally deeply affected. Mr. Lee exhorted them and prayed for them as long as he consistently could, and, having another appointment some distance off that evening, he dismissed the congregation, got a little refreshment, saddled his horse, mounted, and started for his evening appointment. After riding some distance, he saw, a little ahead of him, a man trudging along, carrying a woman on his back. This greatly surprised Mr. Lee. He very naturally supposed that the woman was a cripple, or had hurt herself in some way, so that she could not walk. The traveler was a small man, and the woman large and heavy.

Before he overtook them Mr. Lee began to cast about in his mind how he could render them assistance. When he came up to them, lo and behold, who should it be but the Dutchman and his wife that had been so affected under his sermon at meeting. Mr. Lee rode up and spoke to them, and inquired of the man what had happened, or what was the matter, that he was carrying his wife.

The Dutchman turned to Mr. Lee and said, "Besure you did tell us in your sarmon dat we must take up de cross and follow de Saviour, or dat we could not be saved or go to heaven, and I does desire to go to heaven so much as any pody; and dish vife is so pad, she scold and scold all de time, and dish woman is de createst cross I have in de whole world, and I does take her up and pare her, for I must save my soul.”

From 1801, for years, a blessed revival of religion spread through almost the entire inhabited parts of the west, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and many other parts, especially through the Cumberland country, which was so called from the Cumberland River, which headed and mouthed in Kentucky, but in its great

hend circled south through Tennessee, near Nashville. The Presbyterians and Methodists in a great measure united in this work, met together, prayed together, and preached together.

In this revival originated our camp-meetings, and in both these denominations they were held every year, and, indeed, have been ever since, more or less. They would erect their camps with logs, or frame them, and cover them with clapboards or shingles. They would also erect a shed, sufficiently large to protect five thousand people from wind and rain, and cover it with boards or shingles; build a large stand, seat the shed, and here they would collect together from forty to fifty miles around, sometimes further than that. Ten, twenty, and sometimes thirty ministers, of different denominations, would come together and preach night and day, four or five days together; and, indeed, I have known these camp-meetings to last three or four weeks, and great good resulted from them. I have seen more than a hundred sinners fall like dead men under one powerful sermon, and I have seen and heard more than five hundred Christians all shouting aloud the high praises of God at once; and I will venture to assert that many happy thousands were awakened and converted to God at these camp-meetings. Some sinners mocked, some of the old dry professors opposed, some of the old starched Presbyterian preachers preached against these exercises, but still the work went on and spread almost in every direction, gathering additional force, until our country seemed all coming home to God.

In this great revival the Methodists kept moderately balanced; for we had excellent preachers to steer the ship or guide the flock. But some of our members ran wild, and indulged in some extravagancies that were hard to control. The Presbyterian preachers and members, not being accustomed to much noise or shouting, when they yielded to it went into great extremes and downright wildness, to the great injury of the cause of God.

Daniel Bome

Col. Daniel Boone, the celebrated pioneer of Kentucky, was born of English parentage, in Pennsylvania, in 1734. When a small boy, his parents emigrated to the banks of the Yadkin, in North Carolina.

"At

that time the region beyond the Blue Ridge was an unknown wilderness to the white people, for none had ventured thither, as far as is known, until about the year 1750. It was almost twenty years later than this, when Boone was approaching the prime of life, that he first penetrated the great Valley of the Mississippi, in company with others. He had already, as a bold hunter, been within the eastern verge of the present Kentucky, but now he took a long 'hunt' of about three years. He had made himself familiar with the wilderness, and in 1773, in company with other families, he started with his own to make a settlement on the Kain-tuck-ee River. The hostile Indians compelled them to fall back, and Boone resided on the Clinch River until 1775, when he went forward and planted the settlement of Boonesborough, in the present Madison county, Kentucky. There he built a log fort, and in the course of three or four years several other settlers joined him. His wife and daughters were the first white women ever seen upon the banks of the Kentucky River. He became a great annoyance to the Indians, and while at the Blue Licks, on the Licking River, in February, 1778, engaged with others in making salt, he was captured by some Shawnee warriors from the Ohio country, and taken to Chillicothe. The Indians became attached to him, and he was adopted into a family as a son. A ransom of five hundred dollars was offered for him, but the Indians refused it. He at length escaped (in July following his capture), when he ascertained that a large body of Indians were preparing to march against Boonesborough. They attacked that station three times before the middle of September, but were repulsed. During Boone's captivity, his wife and children had returned to the house of her father, on the Yadkin, where the pioneer visited them in 1779, and remained with them for many months. He returned to Kentucky in 1780, with his family, and assisted Colonel Clark in his operations against the Indians in the Illinois country."

At the close of the war, Boone settled down quietly upon his farm. But he was not long permitted to remain unmolested. His title, owing to the imperfect nature of the land laws of Kentucky, was legally decided to be defective, and Boone was deprived of all claim to the soil which he had explored, settled, and so bravely defended. In 1795, disgusted with civilized society, he sought a new home in the wilds of the far west, on the banks of the Missouri, then within the dominion of Spain. He was treated there with kindness and attention by the public authorities, and he found the simple manners of that frontier people exactly suited to his peculiar habits and temper. With them he spent the residue of his days, and was gathered to his fathers, Sept. 26th, 1820, in the 86th year of his age. He was buried in a coffin which he had had made for years, and placed under his bed, ready to receive him whenever he should be called from these earthly scenes. In the summer of 1845, his remains were removed to Frankfort. In person, Boone was five feet ten inches in hight, and of robust and powerful proportions. He was ordinarily attired as a hunter, wearing a hunting shirt and moccasins. His biographer, who saw him at his residence, on the Missouri River, but a short time before his death, says that on his introduction to Col. Boone, the impressions were those of surprise, admiration and delight. In boyhood, he had read of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky, the celebrated hunter and Indian fighter, and imagination had portrayed a rough, fierce-looking, uncouth specimen of humanity, and of course, at this period of life, a fretful and unattractive old man. But in every respect the reverse appeared. His high, bold forehead was slightly bald, and his silver locks were combed smooth; his countenance was ruddy and fair, and exhibited the simplicity of a child. His voice was soft and melodious; a smile frequently played over his features in conversation; his clothing was the coarse, plain manufacture of the family, but everything about him denoted that kind of comfort which was congenial to his habits and feelings, and evinced a happy old age. His room was part of a range of log cabins, kept in order by his affectionate daughter and granddaughter, and every member of the household appeared to delight in administering to the comforts of "grandfather Boone," as he was familiarly called.

When age had enfeebled his once athletic frame, he made an excursion, twice a year, to some remote hunting ground, employing a companion, whom he bound by a written contract to take care of him, and should he die in the wilderness to bring his body to the cemetery which he had selected as a final resting-place.

George Rogers Clark was born in Albemarle county, Virginia, in 1752. He possessed a most extraordinary military genius, and became conspicuously prominent in the conquest and settlement of the whole west. "He first appeared in history as an adventurer beyond the Alleghanies, in 1772.

He had been engaged in the business of land-surveyor for some time, and that year he went down the Ohio in a canoe as far as the mouth of the Great Kanawha, in company with Rev. David Jones, then on his way to preach the gospel to the western tribes. He was captain of a company in Dunmore's army, which marched against the Indians on the Ohio and its tributaries, in 1774. Ever since his trip in 1772, he ardently desired an opportunity to explore those deep wildernesses in the great valleys, and in 1775 he accompanied some armed settlers to Kentucky, as their commander. During that and the following year, he traversed a great extent of country south of the Ohio, studied the character of the Indians, and made himself master of many secrets which aided in his future success. He beheld a beautiful country, inviting immigration, but the pathway to it was made dangerous by the enemies of the colonists, who sallied forth from the British posts at Detroit, Kaskaskia and Vincennes, with Indian allies. Convinced of the necessity of possessing these posts, Clark submitted the plan of an expedition against them to the Virginia legislature, and early in the spring of 1778 he was at the falls of the Ohio (now Louisville) with four companies of soldiers. There he was joined by Simon