On October 10, 1856, about four hundred people were camped in
Tasajara Valley, California. It could not have been for the
prospect, since a more barren, dreary, monotonous, and uninviting
landscape never stretched before human eye; it could not have been
for convenience or contiguity, as the nearest settlement was thirty
miles away; it could not have been for health or salubrity, as the
breath of the ague-haunted tules in the outlying Stockton marshes
swept through the valley; it could not have been for space or
comfort, for, encamped on an unlimited plain, men and women were
huddled together as closely as in an urban tenement-house, without
the freedom or decency of rural isolation; it could not have been
for pleasant companionship, as dejection, mental anxiety, tears,
and lamentation were the dominant expression; it was not a hurried
flight from present or impending calamity, for the camp had been
deliberately planned, and for a week pioneer wagons had been slowly
arriving; it was not an irrevocable exodus, for some had already
returned to their homes that others might take their places. It
was simply a religious revival of one or two denominational sects,
known as a "camp-meeting."

A large central tent served for the assembling of the principal
congregation; smaller tents served for prayer-meetings and class-
rooms, known to the few unbelievers as "side-shows"; while the
actual dwellings of the worshipers were rudely extemporized
shanties of boards and canvas, sometimes mere corrals or inclosures
open to the cloudless sky, or more often the unhitched covered
wagon which had brought them there. The singular resemblance to a
circus, already profanely suggested, was carried out by a
straggling fringe of boys and half-grown men on the outskirts of