His life, indeed, was so wonderful--much more fascinating than any fiction--that I am not surprised at his believing, as he does, that he is under the special protection of Heaven, and, as he says, in a private covenant with the Almighty that "if he does not thirst for the blood of the Lamanites, his blood shall never be shed by them." He began life as a farmer near Chicago, but being baptized received at once "the immediate gift of the Holy Ghost," and at once entered upon a career of "miracles" and "prophecies" that when told in serious earnest are sufficient to stagger even Madame Blavatsky herself. He cured his neighbours of deadly ailments by the laying on of hands, and foretold conversions, deaths, and other events with unvarying accuracy. By prolonged private meditation he enjoyed what, from his description, must be a pregustation of the Buddhistic Nirvana, and after this, miracles became quite commonplace with him. He witnessed the "miracle" of the great quail flights into the camp of the fugitive and starving Saints in 1846, and helped to collect the birds and to eat them; he saw also the "miraculous" flights of seagulls that rescued the Mormons from starvation by destroying the locusts in 1848. But his personal experiences, narrated with a simplicity of speech and unquestioning confidence that are bewildering, were really marvellous. If cattle were lost, he could always dream where they were. If sickness prevailed, he knew beforehand who would suffer, and which of them would die, and which of them recover. If Indians were about, angels gave him in his sleep the first warnings of his danger. His sympathy with the Indians was, however, very early awakened, and being strengthened in it by the conciliatory Indian policy of Brigham Young, he became before long the only recognized medium of friendly communication with them. Everybody, whether Federal officials, California emigrants, Mormon missionaries, or Indians themselves, enlisted his influence whenever trouble with the tribes was anticipated. His own explanation of this influence is remarkable enough. As a young man, he says, he was sometimes told off to join retributive expeditions, but he could never bring himself to fire at an Indian, and on one occasion, when he did try to do so, his rifle kept missing fire, while "the Lamanites," with equally ineffectual efforts to shed his blood, kept on pincushioning the ground all around him with their futile arrows. After this he and the Indians whenever they met, spared each other's lives with punctual reciprocity.