We enter the mountain regions of Kentucky in which the A. M. A. has schools and churches, a few miles north of Knoxville. Indeed the first station of the Kentucky missions is in Tennessee. This part of the work is under the direction of Rev. A. A. Myers. This region has only recently been opened to the outside world. Coal fields are abundant, and timber of the very best kinds still stands in vast forests on the hillsides and along the streams. These trees shoulder against each other like an army of giants marshalled to defend the wild freedom of their mountain home against the impertinent intrusion of the “humans,” as the mountaineers call men. These brave defenders, however, are fast falling beneath the axe of the lumberman. In the yard of a single mill, seven million five hundred thousand feet of walnut timber was piled ready for the market. This same mill cuts on an average ten million feet of lumber, of all kinds, in a week. A rough, but interesting mountaineer, who sat near me in the freight caboose, in which I rode from Knoxville northward into the mountain region, told me that he kept eight yoke of cattle at work all the time in bringing lumber from the “benches” on the sides of the mountains to the “slides.” These benches are small plains, or miniature plateaus upon which the larger forests grow, as the soil is deeper and richer, being formed from the wash of the mountains above. They draw the logs to the edges of these benches and let them over the slides, down which they dart, as the arrow flies from the string of a bow. It is in this country, so rich in mineral and timbered wealth, that a large part of the mountain work of the A. M. A. lies. The vast army of men crowding into this region to gather its wonderful wealth, makes still more imperative the necessity for Christian work here immediately. A new railroad is pushing its way from Corbin through Barboursville, and pointing toward Cumberland Gap, through which it will probably pass out into Virginia. The whistle of the locomotive is the reveille awakening other thousands to the possibilities of this region, and bringing them together here. You see, therefore, that this field claims our attention and our help, just as every new region of the West does, as it is rapidly filling up through emigration from other parts of our own country and from other lands. There are also the communities of mountaineers, for whom these churches and schools were planted, who have a claim upon us. Within a few years, hundreds of coal mines will pour out their black streams along the railroads, many of which are as yet unbuilt. Furnace fires will light up the darkness of the night along the hillsides. These small towns will be great centers of commercial and industrial importance.