The company immediately seized the Mormons, and soon made them confess that the pretended dead man was also a Mormon elder, and that they had sent him to the farmer’s house, with directions to die there at a particular hour, when they would drop in, as if by accident, and perform a miracle that would astonish everybody.  The farmer, after giving the impostors a severe chastisement, let them depart to practise their humbug in some other quarter.

These two “Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”, were honest Joe and his worthy compeer and coadjutor, Sidney Rigdon.

CHAPTER XLI.

The day of the fishing at length arrived; our party of ladies and gentlemen, with the black cooks and twenty slaves, started two hours before sunrise, and, after a smart ride of some twelve miles, we halted before a long row of tents, which had been erected for the occasion, on the shores of one of these numerous and beautiful western lakes.  Fifty negroes were already on the spot, some cutting wood for fuel, some preparing breakfast, while others made ready the baits and lines, or cleaned empty barrels, in which our intended victims were to be salted.  We scarcely had had time to look around us, when, from twenty different quarters, we beheld the approach of as many parties, who had been invited to share the sport.  We greeted them planter fashion;—­“Are you hungry, eh, eh?—­Sam, Napoleon, Washington, Caesar—­quick—­the breakfast.”

For several days previous, all the creeks of the neighbourhood had been drained of their cray-fish, minnows, and shell-fish.  All the dug-outs and canoes from every stream thirty miles round had also been dragged to the lake, and it was very amusing to see a fleet of eighty boats and canoes of every variety, in which we were about to embark to prosecute our intentions against the unsuspecting inhabitants of the water.

After a hearty, though somewhat hasty meal, we proceeded to business; every white man taking with him a negro, to bait his line and unhook the fish; the paddles were soon put in motion, and the canoes, keeping a distance of fifty yards from each other, having now reached the deepest part of the lake, bets were made as to who would pull up the first fish, the ladies on shore watching the sport, and the caldrons upon the fire ready to receive the first victims.  I must not omit to mention, that two of the larger canoes, manned only by negroes, were ordered to pull up and down the line of fishing-boats and canoes, to take out the fish as they were captured.