. 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 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 g