496 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON IIOUSEBACK. 



buried in a certain spot near Manchester. Four years 

 after this event he visited the spot indicated by the 

 angel, and asserts tliat he had delivered into his charge 

 by another angel a stone box, in which was a volume, 

 six inches thick, made of thin gold plates, eight inches 

 long by seven broad, and fastened together by three 

 gold rings. The plates were said to be covered w^ith 

 small writing in the Egyptian character, and were 

 accompanied by a pair of supernatural spectacles, con- 

 sisting of two crystals set in a silver bow and called 

 **Urim and Ihummim.'^ By aid of these the mystic 

 characters could be read. Joseph Smith, being himself 

 unable to read or write fluently, employed an amanu- 

 ensis to whom he dictated a translation, which was 

 afterward, in 1830, printed and published under the 

 title of the " Book of Mormon.'^ The book professes to 

 give the history of America from its flrst settlement by 

 a colony of refugees from the crowd dispersed by the 

 confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. These 

 settlers having in the course of time dcvStroyed one 

 another, nothing of importance occurred until 600 

 B. c, when Lehi, his wife and four sons, with ten 

 friends, all from Jerusalem, landed on the coast of 

 Chili, and from that period, according to the Mormon 

 theory, America became gradually peopled. 



Ogden. 



Having heard much of the city of Ogden in North- 

 ern Utah — of its peculiar origin and rapid progress — I 

 resolved to rest there for a day or two before proceed- 

 ing to Corinne and other points in my route toward 

 the Sierras. 



