I have detailed this one journey of three days not only to show the condition of this portion of our country, but as little more than a fair representation of destitute parts of many states in the Union. If each colporteur of the Tract Society who has visited these dark, broken, isolated regions of our country for the last eighteen years, had kept a journal of all the ignorance and wretchedness he met, it would have been the most interesting missionary journal the world ever saw. Their reports would differ as widely as the reports of those whom Joshua sent out to visit the promised land. While some would bring in the rich clusters of Eshcol, others, with equal truthfulness, could say that the land was inhabited by giants, whose walls were ignorance and superstition. I was often reminded in my journeys of the early pioneers of our country who went through the forests, tomahawk in hand, blazing the trees as a signal of their intended occupancy of the land at some future time. These visits were the Christian pioneer’s way-marks, not blazed on the trees with axe or tomahawk, but blazed on the hearts of men in a state of nature by kind Christian words, and sealed with earnest prayer; while the books and tracts, including many Bibles and Testaments, were deeds of trust to those that faithfully used them; and many by them have secured a title to eternal life. The books were like Jacob’s well--the digger was gone--but they have quenched the thirst of many a weary traveller on life’s journey, and their smoked pages are still crying, “Ho, every one that thirsteth,” come and partake of the waters of life “without money and without price.” A poor woman who had a small tract given her, on her death-bed had it brought to her, when she kissed it, and said, “This led me to my dear Saviour.” CHAPTER VII. I visited an old woman, who told me that soon after she was married some one lent her Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, and that it was the means of the conversion of herself and her husband; that he had died happily some years ago, but she had never been able to get a copy of the book since. I then presented her with one, and she wept for joy. I asked her if she had a Bible; she said, “No;” that they had a Bible when her husband died, but some time after a little school was opened in the neighborhood, and she wanted her four little boys taught to read, but had no books nor any way to get them, and she had to cut her Bible into four parts to make each of them a book, and they soon went to pieces, and she lost her Bible. I then gave her a Bible, and her joy seemed complete. On another occasion I sent a notice that I would be at a little church in a certain neighborhood to aid them in organizing a Sabbath-school, and to supply the destitute with books. After exhorting for some time, and arranging for the Sabbath-school, I distributed all my stock, and was about to leave.