I penetrated a wild region among the hills, and my own observations and the explorations that I caused to be made secured for it the undoubted and undesirable preëminence of being the banner county for ignorance and destitution of the Bible of all those that I visited. In some manner that I do not now remember, on my first visit I was directed to call upon one of the preachers of the county, who would coöperate with me in making arrangements to have it canvassed and supplied with the Bible. I found his house among the hills in the midst of a vast, dense forest, surrounded by a small clearing or "dead'ning," which was planted with corn and tobacco. He was rather a short, thick-set man, with a powerful, muscular frame, and very quick and active in his movements. On riding up and introducing myself, he gave me a very cordial welcome to his home. It was a log-house, rather larger and higher than was usual in the region; but it was without chambers, and from floor to roof all was a single room. His family, including wife, mother-in-law, and children, numbered an even dozen. I spent the night with them, partaking of such food, using such knife, fork, and dishes, and occupying, with others, such a bed as I can not well describe, and I am sure my readers will not be able to imagine. But I had by this time become so accustomed to this kind of life in the Brush, that, if not pleasant and agreeable to me, it was at least not strange. Not long before, in a similarly wild region, in an adjoining county, I had slept in a much smaller cabin with one room, where the man and his wife and mother-in-law and four children, with another visitor besides myself, occupied three beds. I shared one of them, upon a very narrow bedstead, with the visitor, a neighbor who had called in for a social visit, as rough and tough-looking a long-haired backwoodsman as one often meets, dressed in butternut; and a "chunk of a boy," as his father called him, about a dozen years old, who was placed in the bed between us, with his head at our feet, and _ex necessitate_ his feet not far from my head. It is a kind of lodging that can be endured for a night, as I know from positive experience. But I am not prepared to recommend it.