SATURDAY, November 9.  Go to Stingley’s, dine and feed; stop awhile with old Sister Parks; then on to Enoch Hyre’s, on the South Branch, near Petersburg, Hardy County, Virginia, where we stay all night.  Fine weather.

SUNDAY, November 10.  I do not like to travel far on this day, but there being no meeting in reach of us, and both eager to get as near home as possible, we leave Sister Hyre’s, stop a little with Isaac Shobe’s on Mill Creek, dine and feed at Isaac Dasher’s, on the South Fork, and stay all night at Jacob Whetzel’s, in Brock’s Gap, Rockingham County, Virginia.  Fine weather continues.

MONDAY, November 11.  Home to-day.  Find all well, but some sickness in the neighborhood around.  On the journey from which I have just returned, I traveled 1,271 miles on horse-back, one beast carrying me safely all of that distance.  The roads we traveled were in many places just as nature formed them, the hand of man having done but little more than cut the timber out and remove impassable obstructions.  We crossed high and rugged mountains, and forded dangerous streams.  But in the West the people are waking up to the importance of improving the public roads.  The abundant natural wealth of that country, when properly developed by wise industry, will respond in such lavish abundance that there will be no lack of means to build the best of roads, and in every respect to raise the country generally to that state of beauty by high culture, which ministers to the comfort and usefulness of its people.

The Baltimore & Ohio railroad will soon be completed to Wheeling, and this road, in connection with other roads likely to be built and connect with it, will open a very active traffic between that city and the East.  I feel like saying to the Brethren everywhere that now is the time to sow the pure seeds of Gospel Truth in the West.  If this be not done, tares will be sure to grow and multiply where the wheat of holy love should abound.  Such fields of humanity, so full of life and vigor, will never remain unproductive.  Education and civil law may help to control and keep in bounds the flood of moral and intellectual power flowing from them; but if the hand of sanctified religion be not put forth to give it proper direction, they will turn out to be a moral wilderness of sin, filled with all the wild beasts of human passion, “and every hateful bird.”

In the time of my absence Eli Spitzer and wife, Polly Hindgardner, and another woman were baptized.  This was done September 18.  On the twenty-second there was a love feast at the Lost River meetinghouse; and about that time Samuel Toppan and wife, and three other persons, all on Stony Creek, were baptized.  Thomas Lampkin and Polly Fridley, and another sister were also baptized in my absence.

MONDAY, December 16.  To-day I preach the funeral of old Brother John Wine in the Forest.  Text, Rev. 14:13, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth:  Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.”