Read "The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas" by Frederick Marryat online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I must pass over many details interesting in themselves, but too long to insert in this work. It must suffice to say, that after a time Joe Smith stated that he had possession of the golden plates, and had received from heaven a pair of spectacles by means of which the unknown characters could be decyphered by him. It may appear strange that such absurd assertions should be credited, but the reader must call to mind the credence given in this country to Joanna Southcote, and the infatuation displayed by her proselytes to the very last.
The origin of Mormonism deserves peculiar examination from the success which has attended the imposture, and the prospects which it has of becoming firmly established as a new creed. At its first organization, which took place at the time that the golden plates were translating, which the reader may suppose was nothing more than the contents of the book that Rigdon had obtained possession of, and which had been originally written by S. Spalding, there were but six members of the new creed.