VIRGINIA.
A Destitute County.
The following extract from a letter by an esteemed friend in a central county in Virginia is suggestive of the many dark places throughout the South yet unreached by the school or the church:
The field in this county alone is an ample one. The colored population of the county largely exceeds the white, and the yearly ratio of increase is in excess of the white. A half generation has passed since the era of emancipation, and it is melancholy, indeed, to any Christian mind and heart, to contemplate how rapidly this portion of the population, in the very heart of one of the oldest States in the Union, is crowding the broad road to perdition; how, in the entire absence of all organized efforts for elemental education and proper religious instruction, they are relapsing into semi-heathenism. There is not to-day a single school of any kind or character for them within the limits of the county (which may be safely estimated to contain five thousand souls of all ages and sexes of the colored race), except the Sabbath-school which has been taught by the writer.