Thus, while Rigdon was concocting his Bible and preaching new doctrines, the Smith family were preparing the minds of the people for the appearance of something wonderful; and although Joe Smith was well known to be a drunken vagabond, he succeeded in inspiring, in hundreds of uneducated farmers, a feeling of awe which they could not account for.  I must here stop in my narrative, to make a few observations.

In the great cities of Europe and America, civilization, education, and the active bustle of every-day life, have, to a great degree, destroyed the superstitious feelings so common among the lower classes, and have completely removed the fear of evil geniuses, goblins, and spirits.  But such is not the case in the Western country of the United States, on the borders of the immense forests and amidst the wild and broken scenery of glens and mountains, where torrents roll with impetuosity through caves and cataracts; where, deprived of the amusements and novelties which would recreate his imagination, the farmer allows his mind to be oppressed with strange fancies, and though he may never avow the feeling, from the fear of not meeting with sympathy, he broods over it, and is a slave to the wild phantasmagoria of his brain.  The principal cause of this is, the monotony and solitude of his existence.

At these confines of civilization, the American is always a hunter, and those who dwell on the smaller farms, at the edges of forests, often depend, for their animal food, upon the skill of the male portion of their community.  In the fall of the year, the American shoulders his rifle, and goes alone into the wilds, to “see after his pigs, horses, and cows.”  Constantly on the look-out for deer and wild bees, he resorts to the most secluded spots, to swamps, mountain ridges, or along the bushy windings of some cool stream.  Constant views of nature in her grandeur, the unbroken silence of his wanderings, causes a depression of the mind, and, as his faculties of sight and hearing are ever on the stretch, it affects his nervous system.  He starts at the falling of a dried leaf, and, with a keen and painful sensation, he scrutinizes the withered grass before him, aware that at every step he may trample upon some venomous and deadly reptile.  Moreover, in his wanderings, he is often pressed with hunger, and is exposed to a great deal of fatigue.

“Fast in the wilds, and you will dream of spirits,” is an Indian axiom, and a very true one.  If to the above we add, that his mind is already prepared to receive the impressions of the mysterious and marvellous, we cannot wonder at their becoming superstitious.  As children, they imbibe a disposition for the marvellous; during the long evenings of winter, when the snow is deep, and the wild wind roars through the trees, the old people will smoke their pipes near huge blazing logs, and relate to them some terrible adventure.  They speak of unearthly noises heard near some caves, of hair-breadth escapes in encounters with evil spirits, under the form of wild animals; and many will whisper, that at such a time of night, returning from some neighbouring market, they have met with the evil one in the forest, in such and such a spot, where the two roads cross each other, or where the old oak has been blasted by lightning.