, he was ignorant of almost everything which pertained to
science; but he made up in natural cunning for many deficiencies
of education. At the age of ten, he was taken by his father to
Wayne County, New York, where his youth was spent in an idle,
vagabond life, roaming the woods, dreaming of buried treasures,
and exerting himself to find them by the twisting of a forked stick
in his hands, or by looking through enchanted stones. He and
his father were 'water witchers,' always ready to point out the
exact points where wells could be successfully dug. While leading
an idle, profligate life, Joseph Smith became acquainted with Sidney
Rigdon, a man of talents and great plausibility. Rigdon was the
possessor of a religious romance written some years before by a
Presbyterian clergyman. The perusal of this book suggested to
Smith and Rigdon the idea of starting a new religion. By them a
story was accordingly devised to the effect that golden plates had
been found buried near Palmyra, New York, containing a record
inscribed on them in unknown characters, which, when deciphered by
the power of inspiration, gave the history of the ten lost tribes of
Israel in their wanderings through Asia into America, where they
had settled and flourished, and where, in due time, Christ came
and preached the Gospel to them, appointed his twelve Apostles,
and was crucified here, nearly in the same manner he had been in
Jerusalem. The record then pretended to give the history of the
American Christians for a few hundred years until the wickedness
of the people called down the judgment of God upon them, which
resulted in their extermination. Several nations from the Isthmus
of Darien to the northern extremity of the continent were engaged in
continual warfare. The culmination of all this was the battle
of Cumorah, fought many centuries ago near the present site of
Palmyra, between the Lamanites and the Nephites--the former being the
heathen and the latter the Christians of this continent. In
this battle, in which hundreds of thousands were slain, the Nephites
perished from the earth, except a remnant, who escaped to the
southern country. Among this number was Mormon, a righteous man
who was divinely directed to make a record of these important events
on plates of gold, and who buried them in the earth, to be
discovered in future times. 'The Book of Mormon'--none other than
the religious romance above mentioned--is the pretended transla