noon
In two or three days , I received a hundred or more applications from various speculators , `` to go and kill the Indians in the West , and take away their treasures ; '' and I should have undoubtedly received ten thousand more , had I not hit upon a good plan to rid myself of all their importunities . I merely sent all the notes to the newspapers as fast as I received them ; and it excited a hearty laugh amongst the traders , when thirty letters appeared in the columns , all of them written in the same tenour and style . One evening I found at the post-office a letter from Joseph Smith himself , in which he invited me to go to him without any loss of time , as the state of affairs having now assumed a certain degree of importance , it was highly necessary that we should at once come to a common understanding . Nothing could have pleased me more than this communication , and the next morning I started from St. Louis , arriving before noon at St. Charles , a small town upon the Missouri , inhabited almost entirely by French Creoles , fur-traders , and trappers . There , for the first time , I saw a steam-ferry , and , to say the truth , I do not understand well how horses and waggons could have been transported over before the existence of steamboats , as , in that particular spot , the mighty stream rolls its muddy waters with an incredible velocity , forming whirlpools , which seem strong enough to engulf anything that may come into them . From St. Charles I crossed a hilly land , till I arrived once more upon the Mississippi ; but there `` the father of the waters , '' -LRB- as the Indians call it -RRB- presented an aspect entirely new : its waters , not having yet mixed with those of the Missouri , were quite transparent ; the banks , too , were several hundred feet high , and recalled to my mind the countries watered by the Buona Ventura River . For two days I continued my road almost always in sight of the stream , till at last , the ground becoming too broken and hilly , I embarked upon another steam ferry at Louisiana , a rising and promising village , and landed upon the shores of Illinois , where the level prairies would allow of more rapid travelling .