My ride to B----, the county-seat, was through a rough, wild, and broken region. This may be judged from the fact that the average value of the land, improved and unimproved, of the entire county, as returned by the assessors, and published in the Report of the Auditor of the State for the preceding year, was but one dollar and seventy-nine cents per acre. Even this was a little more valuable than the land of an adjoining county that I explored most thoroughly, the average value of which, as published in the same Report, was one dollar and seventy-four cents per acre. Yet these counties had been settled more than fifty years. Arriving at the little village, a perfect stranger, my first inquiry was for some professor of religion who would be likely to take an interest in my work, and aid me to make arrangements, if possible, to preach there the following Sabbath. I was directed by my host to call on the school-master of the place, whom I found to be an old man more than sixty years of age, who gave me a warm welcome, and cheerfully rendered me the desired aid. Upon inquiry, we learned that the court-house, which was the place used by all denominations for preaching, would not be occupied the next Sabbath, and accordingly it was arranged that a notice should be circulated that I would preach there on that day, at 4 P.M. This accomplished, I left the village to attend to other duties, and await the Sabbath. As there was no newspaper at this county-seat, and but a very few families resided there, and only a few days intervening, the uninitiated in southwestern backwoods life will wonder how the people in the adjacent hills and valleys were to be notified of this service and a congregation assembled. But I had been long enough in the Brush to have no apprehensions upon this point. I knew that they would not only all be notified for miles around, but that the most of them would be present. I have found by experience that it is one of the peculiarities of the wilder and wildest portions of the country, that the people will be at the greatest possible pains to notify their neighbors far and near whenever a stranger will preach, whatever may be the day of the week or the hour of the day. I have frequently arrived at a solitary log-cabin, late in the afternoon, after a wearisome day's ride through a rough, wild, mountainous region, and almost as soon as I had made myself known as a preacher, they would say: "Can't you preach for us here to-night?" "Oh, yes," I have replied; "but I have seen very few cabins for a long way back, and I can't understand where the congregation is to come from." "We know that," they have rejoined; "but there's a heap of people scattered over these hills, and if you will agree to preach for us to-night, you will be sure to have a houseful."