waters over the broad lands?

[pg 273]

BOOK REVIEW.

THE REAR GUARD OF THE REVOLUTION. By JAMES R. GILMORE (Edmund Kirke). D. Appleton & Co.: New York. 1.50.

JOHN SEVIER AS A COMMONWEALTH BUILDER. By JAMES R. GILMORE (Edmund Kirke). D. Appleton & Co.: New York. 1.50.

Just one hundred years before the rebellion of the Southern States, Daniel Boone cut on a beech tree near Jonesboro, Tenn., the following words, which are still legible:

The same year that Daniel Boone "cilled" (killed) this "bar," William Bean, a former companion of Boone's, settled in the valley of the Watauga River, in what is now Eastern Tennessee. The two volumes whose titles are given above trace the history of this mountain settlement from the time that this pioneer crossed the Alleghenies down to the death of John Sevier, Sept. 24, 1815. These books are of much more than ordinary interest to the readers of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY. James R. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke) has put the same power of graphic description, the simple yet thrilling narrative, which held us spell-bound to the last chapters of Among the Pines.

Our limited space does not permit an extended review of these volumes. We only call attention to them here because they touch upon great missionary problems, and throw a flood of light upon these interesting Mountain people among whom the A.M.A. has so extensive and important a work. The first of these volumes in chronological order is the Rear Guard of the Revolution. The colony of the Mountain people in the Watauga Valley, led by John Sevier and James Robertson and Isaac Shelby, constituted this "rear guard." No better blood ever mingled in the veins of a people than that which flows in this Mountain people. French Huguenot, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and Welsh Presbyterian were their ancestors. With such leadership as these three men furnished, the early Mountain colonists ought to have been heroes, and they were.

In the author's own words, "These three men, John Sevier, James Robertson and Isaac Shelby, * * * were like Washington and Lincoln, 'providential men.' They marched neither to the sound of drum nor bugle, and no flaming bulletins proclaimed their exploits in the ears of a listening continent; their slender forces trod silently the western solitudes, and their greatest battles were insignificant skirmishes never reported beyond the mountains; but their deeds were pregnant with consequences that will be felt along the coming centuries."

They were, and they held themselves to be, "providential men." Whether reading the Bible by the light of the great pine fires, or burning the cabins [pg 274] of the Cherokees, or driving the marauding Chickamaugas into their lair at "Nick-a-Jack" cave, or beating the British at King's Mountain, these men felt themselves called of God to maintain for the people a free government.

There was the same reckless administration of punishment that still characterizes these Mountain people. A tory appeared in the road one day near the home of Colonel William Campbell, of the "Backwater settlement." The Colonel at once gives him chase; after a brief absence he returns to his home, and his wife eagerly asks "What did you do with him?"

"Oh, we hung him, Betty, that's all."

These early settlers did not immediately plant churches and school-houses, as the settlers of New England did. Still they were not altogether illiterate. A public document still in existence has the signature of 112 out of 114 of their number who signed the paper, two only making their X.

In 1779, the first Court House was built at Jonesboro. At about the same date, the author informs us, "The school mistress was to be found at nearly every cross-road in the older settlements. She occupied a small log-house, generally about sixteen feet square, and often without floor or windows." The author might have added that she, or one like her, occupies the same school-house to-day.

In 1779, the first "church-house" was erected, and Rev. Tidence Lane became the "first settled minister beyond the Alleghenies."

To those of our readers who have recently followed the missionary work of the A.M.A. in this Mountain region, these books will be of great interest.

CHAS. J. RYDER.

We have received from Rev. Austin Willey, author of "THE HISTORY OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAUSE IN THE STATE AND NATION," a gift of one hundred copies of the book for gratuitous distribution among our workers in the South. We gave a brief review and a warm commendation of the volume in the AMERICAN MISSIONARY for June, 1886, and we renew our endorsement, and tender our thanks to the author for his benefaction. Our field workers will be interested in this candid sketch of the early anti-slavery struggle, and we believe that many of our white friends in the South will be glad to read in the light of these quiet days the sayings and doings of a class of people whom they then misunderstood.

The book may be had of B. Thurston, Portland, Me., or of C.T. Dillingham, 678 Broadway, N.Y. Price, 1.50, postpaid.

The reference to Father Willey and his book is suggestive. He is one of the "old, original" abolitionists. Men who were once denounced and are now scarcely honored, for lo! to the amazement and amusement of some of us, we find that everybody was an abolitionist and always had been, that everybody learned to hate slavery on the mother's lap, and was always opposed to it! We who in those early days were treated as outcasts by "gentlemen of property [pg 275] and standing," and mobbed by the rabble at their bidding, are led to wonder what has become of all those who thus disagreed with us! One marked exception occurs to us. A prominent professor in a theological seminary, when the question was put to him ten years ago: "Professor, when did you become an Abolitionist?" replied, with a merry twinkle in his eye: "When it became popular." We have found few, however, who are so frank or so witty.

M.E. STRIEBY.

THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE OF OUR MISSIONARIES AT THE SOUTH.

In a recent number of The Nineteenth Century, Sir William W. Hunter, an eminent authority, reporting the influence of the missionaries in India, says that among the people to whom they have gone they have built up the most complete confidence and implicit faith in the purity and unselfishness of their motives. He declares that he regards the missionary work of the English as an expiation for wrong-doing, and he believes that the missionary instinct forms the necessary spiritual complement of the aggressive genius of the English race. Sir William also claims that the advance of missionaries in the good opinion of non-Christian peoples is a most striking evidence of their high character and intelligence, and that no class of Englishmen has done so much to make England respected in India as the missionaries, that no class has done so much to awaken the Indian's intellect and to lessen the dangers of transition from the old state of things to the new.

After this much of condensation of that profound article by the Christian Union, we quote from the author:

"The careless onlooker may have no particular convictions on the subject, and flippant persons may ridicule religious effort in India as elsewhere. But I think that few Indian administrators have passed through high office, and had to deal with the ultimate problems of British government in that country, without feeling the value of the work done by missionaries. Such men gradually realize, as I have realized, that the missionaries do really represent the spiritual side of the new civilization, and of the new life