By Shore and Sedge

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 mono-tonous 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.