180 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



whose double-barrelled rifle had excited their wonder and 

 curiosity. 



From him they learned also that a large band of Mor- 

 mons were wintering on the Arkansa, en route to the 

 Great Salt Lake and Upper California ; and as our hunters 

 had before fallen in with the advanced-guard of these 

 fanatic emigrants, and felt no little wonder that such help- 

 less people should undertake so long a journey through 

 the wilderness, the stranger narrated to them the history 

 of the sect, which we shall shortly transcribe for the bene- 

 fit of the reader. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE Mormons were originally of the sect known as "Lat- 

 ter-day Saints," which sect flourishes wherever Anglo- 

 Saxon gulls are found in sufficient numbers to swallow the 

 egregious nonsense of fanatic humbugs who fatten upon 

 their credulity. In the United States they especially 

 abounded ; but the creed becoming " slow," one Joe Smith, 

 a smart man, rose from its ranks and instilled a little life 

 into the decaying sect. 



Joe, better known as the " Prophet Joe," was taking his 

 siesta one fine day upon a hill in one of the New England 

 States, when an angel suddenly appeared to him, and made 

 known the locality of a new Bible or Testament, which 

 contained the history of the lost tribes of Israel ; that 

 these tribes were no other than the Indian nations which 

 possessed the continent of America at the time of its dis- 

 covery, and the remains of which still existed in their 

 savage state ; that through the agency of Joe these were to 

 lie reclaimed, collected into the bosom of a church to be 

 there established, according to principles which would be 

 found in the wonderful book and which church was 



