"Landing in Buffalo, we [Pratt and wife] engaged our passage for Albany in a canal boat, distance three hundred and sixty miles. This, including board, cost all our money and some articles of clothing." Would a mere desire to visit friends induce him to give up part of his clothing for passage money? Hardly; he was after larger game. But let us read on: "Arriving at Rochester, I informed my wife that, notwithstanding our passage being paid through the whole distance, yet I must leave the boat and leave her to pursue her passage to our friends, while I would stop a while in this region. _Why, I did not know;_ but so it was plainly manifest by the Spirit to me. I said to her: 'We part for a season; go and visit our friends in our native place; I will come soon, but how soon I know not, _for I have a work to do in this region of country, and what it is or how long it will take me to perform it, I know not;_ but I will come when it is performed. My wife would have objected to this, but she had seen the _Hand of God_ so plainly manifest in His dealings with me many times that she dare not oppose the things manifest to me by His Spirit. She therefore consented, and I accompanied her as far as Newark, a small town upwards of a hundred miles from Buffalo, and then took leave of her and of the boat." "It was early in the morning, just at the dawn of day. I walked ten miles into the country [remember now he doesn't know where he is going], and stopped with a Mr. Wells." This was undoubtedly a member of the same Wells family of Macedon with whom Joseph Smith had long been on terms of intimacy.[119] Pratt's autobiography continues: [Footnote 119: "Joseph Smith, the Prophet," by Lucy Smith, 101-103. Probably this refers to the home of Daniel H. Wells, afterward a prominent Mormon in Utah.] "I proposed to preach in the evening. Mr. Wells readily accompanied me through the neighborhood to visit the people and circulate the appointment." "We visited an old Baptist deacon by the name of Hamblin. After hearing of our appointment for the evening, he began to tell of _a book, a strange book, a very strange book_ in his possession, which had just been published. I inquired of him how and where the book was to be obtained. He promised me the perusal of it at his house the next day, if I would call. I felt a strange interest in the book. Next morning I called at his house, where, for the first time, my eyes beheld the 'Book of Mormon,' that book of books." Pratt says he opened it with eagerness and examined its contents. "As I read, _the spirit of the Lord was upon me,_ and I knew and comprehended that the book was true as plainly and as manifestly as a man comprehends and knows that he exists." [120] [Footnote 120: "Autobiography of P.P. Pratt," 37-38.]