I asked where the plates were now, and saw in a moment from the expression of the countenances around that I had blundered. But I was answered that they were in a cave; that Oliver Cowdery though now an apostate would not deny that he had seen them. He had been to the cave, I did not understand exactly whether Oliver Cowdery was there three times, or whether he accompanied Joseph the third time e went there, and Brigham Young’s tone was so solemn that I listened bewildered like a child to the evening witch stories of its nurse. Nor do I understand whether the plates were all transcribed by this time or not. The plates are the thin leaves of gold shaped like thin sections of a cow-bell, to speak profanely, and threaded on golden rings which the Mormons believe Joseph to have found in the hill Cumorah. The curious characters inscribed upon them he was enabled to translate by means of a magic, or hallowed, pair of immense eye-glasses, to speak profanely again of what the Mormons reverence, called the Urim & Thummim found in the same small chest in which the plates were. This translation is the Book of Mormon.

Brigham Young said that when Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith were in the cave this third time, they could see its contents more distinctly than before, just as your eyes get used to the light of a dim candle, and objects in the room become plain to you. It was about fifteen feet high and round its sides were ranged boxes of treasure. In the centre was a large stone table empty before, but now piled with similar gold plates, some of which also lay scattered on the floor beneath. Formerly the sword of Laban hung on the walls sheathed, but it was now unsheathed and lying across the plates on the table; and One that was with them said it was never to be sheathed until the reign of Righteousness upon the earth.”