where I stand now, a hundred or a thousand years hence, experience the same desire to know the early history of the mighty west, of which I now am conscious? The answer is clear: He will. Then I am

resolved to "gather up the fragments," not already lost, of the history of the west, and preserve them,

"That ages yet unborn may read,

And trust and praise the Lord.”

But this infant

The west is, as yet, only an infant. possesses the elements of a fearful and stupendous growth. Ere long, the inhabitants of the world will open their eyes, and with astonishment behold a giant standing here. His height will be terrible, and his power such, that earth's foundations will bend beneath his footsteps; and at the lifting of his hand distant nations will tremble.

Yes, the teeming millions of a crowded population will soon spread over this wide and wonderful region. The banks of these long rivers will be studded with "cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces;" and religion, and education, and science, and cultivated society will be here, to an extent that earth has not witnessed in ages that are gone. In that day, the mighty population of the west will eagerly inquire after the early history of their country.

I have determined, therefore, to gather up the facts within the period of my own memory, and arrange them, and dedicate the record to the generations following. A larger work, entitled "The Early Religious History of the West," which the author has for years been preparing, is more particularly referred to, than the mere sketches contained in the present volume.

THE HONEY-BEE.

How strong is the propensity in man to honor the prophet that is dead, while he rejects the prophet that is living! Scribes, Pharisees, and Jewish rulers would build the sepulchres of Samuel, Isaiah, and Zachariah; but when Jesus Christ, the living Prophet, appeared, preaching the same truths, they cried out, "Away with him from the earth! Crucify him! crucify him!"

Men admire and eulogize those very attributes in the dead prophet which they cannot bear in the prophet that is living. Go to any revival-fighting Presbyterian minister in the west or south. He will expatiate with much enthusiasm on the preaching of John Knox, when such multitudes, in one generation, were turned from darkness to light. He will hastily search his library for a printed account of that remarkable sermon of Livingston, in Scotland, on the Monday of a sacramental meeting, under which five hundred souls were converted to God. He will speak, with great interest and earnestness, of the blessed results that followed the preaching of Samuel Davies in Virginia, and James Waddell, afterwards known far and wide as the Blind Preacher mentioned by Wirt in his "British Spy." These preachers and their hearers are gone from earth.

"Their hatred and their love is lost,
Their envy buried in the dust;
They have no share in all that's done
Beneath the circuit of the sun."

But speak to this same man of a revival in the present "Ah, there were sad indiscretions!" "animal excitement!" "spasmodic movements!" &c.

age.

That is it: build the sepulchre of the prophet that is dead, and scowl at the prophet that is living. Eulogize Elisha and Daniel, but stone Stephen to death, and crucify his Lord and Master.

In like manner, we are ready to acknowledge a providence of God toward those who are dead and gone, which we are slow to admit in reference to those now living. We can believe that God sent against Pharaoh "swarms of flies," armies of frogs, and legions of locusts. These were judgments from God. His hand was made bare. We see it at once, and confess it without difficulty; for these things took place above three thousand years ago. We can believe that God brought the quails around the camp of the Israelites as they journeyed through the wilderness, and that he sent hornets before them to drive out the

Canaanite, the Hittite, and the Hivite, (Ex. xxiii. 28,) for these things, also, were done in a remote age of the world. But are we willing to believe that there are, at this hour, around the church and around the individual saint, the same careful, constant, almighty guardianship and direction that there were in the days of Moses, of Joseph, and of Abraham? Are we willing to believe that now the sparrow does not fall to the ground without the hand of God? and that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered? To such questions, many will give the practical answer, "No!"

This infidelity concerning the presence and providence of God in our own day, is the crying sin of the present age. The High and Holy One is the same from

everlasting to everlasting. With him there is no "variableness, or shadow of turning." And had we an inspired account of what God is doing now in behalf of his redeemed people, we should find that for the good of each believer the hand of the Lord is stretched out still, and that his providence has all the divine minuteness and particularity, at this moment, which it possessed when Noah, Daniel, and Job stood before him.

Modern unbelief will scarcely scruple to admit that God may have controlled the affairs of this world long, long ago; but now, in this enlightened age, it is fanaticism to believe in a particular, all-directing providence. Now, all events are the sport of blind chance, contingency, accident.

I am about to state a well-authenticated fact in the early history of the western country. The honey-bee, with strict, constant, and invariable uniformity, goes in front of the Christian population, as the wave of emigration rolls westward. No one fact is more unquestionably established than this, in the experience and observation of frontier western men. Ten, twenty, thirty miles in advance of the white settlements, the honey-bee swarms in every forest, filling with delicious honey the hollows in the trees, and often the caverns, crevices, and openings in the rocks. Long has it been the custom, with those near our western border, to take their wagons, in the latter part of the summer, and go a few miles in advance of the population, and load them with honey. But go two hundred miles into the Indian country, and there has not been a honey-bee there in two thousand years never, within the memory of the present race of Indians. The Indians regard the bee as the certain

forerunner of the white men.

The moment they find that the bee has penetrated their country, they begin to lament and wail. "The white man is coming! We must give up the country!"

I will state another fact. The quail follows the white man. Quails, by hundreds and by thousands, come flocking around the tent, the camp, or the cabin of the white man as he journeys west. But go one hundred miles into the Indian territory, no quail has ever been seen there since the red man occupied the country. How do you account for these facts? Let me ask, how do you account for the hornets going before the camp of Israel, to drive out the Canaanite, the Hittite, and the Hivite? How do you account for the quails coming round the camp of Israel in such quantities? In both cases we see the hand of God. "The church" was with Israel "in the wilderness," (Acts vii. 38,) and it was for the sake of the church those wonders were done. God now has a church among our western population. The ark of his covenant is there, and still his hand does wonders for Zion's sake.

As the above facts may appear strange to some of my readers, I wish here, somewhat at large, to "speak what I know, and testify what I have seen.' My father lived, from my earliest recollection, within a few miles of the Tennessee River. South of this river, within the bounds of the state of Tennessee, was the Indian territory. It was a lovely and inviting country, but the Indians positively refused to sell it to the white people on any conditions. In this obstinate refusal they persisted for more than twenty years; and the wave of American emigration in that direction was checked, and stood, like the tide of Jordan in the days of Joshua,