The Camp Meeting at La Center
The New Northwest
Abigail Scott Duniway
August 9, 1874

Taking the afternoon train for home, we rested for another journey, by pursuing another chapter of the fortunes of "Amie and Henry Lee," making hurried preparations to get off on the next morning on the steamer Onward, bound for Lewis River and a camp meeting upon its banks, above Pekin, where spiritualists, with characteristic liberality, had kindly invited us to go and lecture upon any subject which we might feel disposed to select.

The little steamer is one of these which Dr. Haskell calls "a kick up behind," being long and narrow, and consequently well suited to the navigation of the far famed slough of the Willamette and the Columbia, and more especially to the narrow channels of the Lewis and Cowlitz rivers, where the captain draws a "bead" on the current, and makes a hair trigger of the helm, and is, by long practice, enabled to graze and barely pass the peeping and sunken snags which lie in wait to deceive the unwary which in all our western water courses.

Pekin, classic Pekin of which we had often heard, loomed up at last, hard by the prow of our faithful boat. A gang plank, at an angle of 45 degrees, was placed on the bank, which we climbed, to find our self in the heart of the city, a thriving retail variety store, where Messer's. Woods and Caples, merchants, who understand their business, are enabled to furnish anything in their line which you may call for, from an elephant to a fine tooth comb.

Everybody knows Uncle Caleb Woods. He is one of the most through and radical women suffragists extant, and we'd dearly love to hear him debate with some of the long-faced opposition clergymen of the day upon Women's Rights and the Bible. He has a refreshing reverence for the grand old book, and has all of his Bible arguments concerning his particular hobby forever ready at his tongues end.

Well, we, that is, Uncle Caleb and our self, started through the meadow to the camping ground, a quarter of a mile away. He, that is, Uncle Caleb, got interested in talking of his theme, and we were equally interested in keeping within hearing distance, as we demurely trotted behind him along the winding low paths. Finally, after an hour or so--more or less--we ventured to recall our friend from lofty heights of his theme, and we did it thusly; "Uncle Caleb, didn't you say the camp ground wasn't but a quarter or so from the store?" 

"Yes its right over yonder," said he, pointing toward an alder grove that nestled itself in undulating loveliness upon a copse of hazel and luxuriant vine maple. Following the path, we soon reached the grove, but the camp-meeting-wasn't there. Felt sorry for Uncle Caleb in the ludicrous perplexity. "I'm sure we've walked a mile and a half," we said, by way of wise encouragement, and laughing in spite of the heat of noonday and the exertion of the long and hurried ramble.

"You better sit down here on the river bank till I go below an' get a boat," said he. We thought of our own forty years and his nearly seventy, and couldn't stand that; so back we plodded in the direction whence we came, and in about half an hour found the place of our destination and a host of genial friends who had been wondering at our long delay. Uncle Caleb though the joke was too good to tell. We thought it too good to keep; and so, reader, there you have it.

The attendance at the meeting, though good, was not so large as was anticipated, owing to a panic about the small-pox several miles away, but we have never anywhere seen a more harmonious gathering. All were anxious to hear from us upon the "Woman Question," and we did the best we could to prevent them from being disappointed. Dr. Cleveland, the noted trance speaker, gave some excellent addresses, but he only partially succeeded in making the masses believe that it was Michael Servetus or some other dear departed, and not Al Cleveland himself, who was regaling us by the hour with history, ancient and modern, sacred and profane. 

We sincerely believe the man is honest, and shall, of course, retain our present conviction until the contrary is proven. Certes, if everybody would obey his injunctions, given when in the "superior condition" called the trance, the millennium would soon be ushered in upon the earth. Mrs. Fain, one of the crusading band of this city, was going to Freeport, and by her we sent posters announcing a Sunday evening lecture in the church at that place, upon the "Temperance Question." 

It was raining heavily at the steamer landing, and the prospects were decidedly blue for an audience, but the good people, nothing daunted by the shower, filled the church, and gave attentive heed to a speech of one and a half's hours' duration. At the close of the lecture we were unexpectedly pleased to meet Brother Tharp, a young Methodist minister recently placed upon the circuit here, a sprightly, agreeable and exemplary gentleman, and of course, and uncompromising Woman Suffragist. We are sure that he will do a good work in his chosen calling. 

We were also hospitably entertained by a bevy of agreeable and intelligent ladies who had been on an excursion to the camp meeting and who took us to their home in Freeport, where we met their genial parents in a perfect bird's nest of a place, where clover and apple trees and petunias and honeysuckles smiles and accompanying welcome to the greetings of the worthy host and hostess.

Spent the night on the little steamer where she rested against the bank at Freeport, and on the morrow awoke at seven, to find that we had been on the wing, or, rather, wave, for two hours, and had consequently bidden unconscious good-bye to the unpretending Cowlitz, and were steaming onward through the current of the ostentatious and mighty River of the West.