Only a small proportion of them could fall within the observation of any one bystander. The scene was to me equally novel and curious. About dusk I retired several hundred yards into the woods to enjoy the distant effect of the meeting. Female voices were mournfully predominant, and my imagination figured to me a multitude of mothers, widows, and sisters, giving the {235} first vent to their grief, in bewailing the loss of a male population, by war, shipwreck, or some other great catastrophe. It had been thought proper to place sentinels without the camp. Females were not allowed to pass out into the woods after dark. Spirituous liquors were not permitted to be sold in the neighbourhood. Large fires of timber were kindled, which cast a new lustre on every object. The white tents gleamed in the glare. Over them the dusky woods formed a most romantic gloom, only the tall trunks of the front rank were distinctly visible, and these seemed so many members of a lofty colonnade. The illuminated camp lay on a declivity, and exposed a scene that suggested to my mind the moonlight gambols of beings known to us only through the fictions of credulous ages. The greatest turmoil prevailed within the fence, where the inmates were leaping and hobbling together with upward looks and extended arms. Around this busy mass, the crowd formed a thicker ring than the famous Macedonian phalanx; and among them, a mixture of the exercised were interspersed. Most faces were turned inward to gaze on the grand exhibition, the rear ranks on tip-toe, to see over those in front of them, and not a few mounted on the log-seats, to have a more commanding view of the show. People were constantly passing out and into the ring in brisk motion, so that the white drapery of females, and the darker apparel of the men were alternately vanishing and reappearing in the most elegant confusion. The sublimity of the music served to give an enchanting effect to the whole. My mind involuntarily reverted to the leading feature of the tale of Alloway Kirk: {236} “Warlocks and witches in a dance; Where Tam o’Shanter ----Stood like ane bewitch’d, And thought his very een enrich’d.” Late in the evening a man detached himself from the crowd, walking rapidly backward and forward, and crying aloud. His vociferations were of this kind: “I have been a great sinner, and was on the way to be damned; but am converted now, thank God--glory, glory!” He turned round on his heel occasionally, giving a loud whoop. A gentleman with whom I am well acquainted, told me that he had a conversation with a female who had just recovered from the debility of the day. She could give no other account of her sensations than that she felt so good, that she could press her very enemy to her bosom.