Such are some of the experiences I have had with old-time Methodist circuit-riders in the Brush, and such are some of the accounts they have given me of their experiences upon other circuits. They are but specimens of such as were constantly occurring during the months and years of my _ante-bellum_ labors in the Southwest. Many of them are so dim and faded on the tablets of my memory that I can not recall them. After so many years, I now, for the first time, record these on more enduring pages, thinking they may afford both pleasure and instruction, and anxious, also, to wreath a garland of merited praise around the brows of those toiling, and too little known, and too little honored circuit-riders in the Brush. CHAPTER XII. HEROIC CHRISTIAN WORKERS IN THE SOUTHWEST. It was a bright, dreamy, autumnal day, that I was making my way among the bayous of one of the most sluggish of the rivers that enter and swell the volume of the Mississippi. My ride since morning had been very long and very lonely. It is a strange sort of life to ride on horseback, week after week and month after month, over a new and sparsely settled country. The most of such journeys are alone. One but rarely meets with company, and then they usually travel together but a short distance before their paths diverge and they separate. In these long, solitary rides, any unusual scene or incident startles one as from a dreamy reverie, and makes a lasting, an almost ineffaceable, impression upon the memory. [Illustration: A circuit rider in the Brush.]