AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 31
where we stopped a short time to visit our friends. Father Smith, the Patriarch, gave us his blessing and much good fatherly counsel, and expressed much sympathy for us in connection with our mission through the southern part of Missouri, the immediate field of our prospective labors. At that time the excitement against the Latter-day Saints had been fanned to fever heat in every part of the State, consequently it was more than probable that we should meet with abuse and have to submit to many hardships.
In going the rounds in Far West, we called on Elder Thomas B. Marsh, then President of the Quorum of the Twelve. I think at that time he was indulging a spirit of apostacy, which, not long after, culminated in his severance from the Church. In our conversation with him, our spirits and his did not intermingle, and he seemed utterly blind in relation to the condition of things and the spirit of the times. He expressed unbounded charity for our enemies—said he did not think they intended us much harm—they were not naturally inclined to wickedness, etc. It is a noticeable feature in those who cherish a spirit of apostacy from the light of the Gospel, that they adopt the doctrine of Universalism and think none too wicked for a complete and unconditional salvation.
On leaving Far West, we directed our course to the Missouri River, where we found a camp of our brethren, some of whom were intending to go down the river and return to their homes, somewhere in the southern part of the State. We joined together in constructing a kind of water-craft—it was not a canoe, neither a skiff or raft, and to name it a boat would be preposterous; but, whatever its proper cognomen, its capacity was sufficient to accommodate five men, and, on the seventeenth of October, in the midst of a heavy fall of snow, we launched it, and started on a most perilous passage down the turbid waters of a turbulent river. At that season of the year the stream was very low, and frequently through the day we
