--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Lambourne, Alfred collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 13 number: 2 published: 1909-12 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Alfred Lambourne, "Extract from “The Old Journey”," *Improvement Era* 13, no. 2 (December 1909): 123.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1302unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1302unse start_page: 123 end_page: 123 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-12) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1302unse publication_year: 1909 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1909, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Extract from “The Old Journey” r == \ Extrafl from "(Uhr (®lb lattnug." By Alfred Lamhuurnr, author of "Our Inland Sea," etc. OUNTLESS in numbers almost were those silent wit- nesses of death by the way. The mounds were to be seen in all imaginable places. Each day we passed them, singly or in groups; and sometimes, nay, often, one of our own company was left behind to swell the number. By the banks of streams, on grassy hillocks, in the sands, be- neath groves of trees, or among piles of rock, the graves were dug. We left the new mounds to be beaten upon by the tempests, scorched by the sun, or for beauty to gather about as it had about many of the older ones. Sometimes when we camped, the old graves would be directly alongside the wagons. I recall sitting by one that was thickly covered with grass and without a headboard, while I ate my evening meal, and of sleeping beside it at night. One remains in my mind as a very soothing little picture— a child's grave, and it was screened around with a thicket of wild rose that leaned lovingly over it, while the mound itself was overgrown with moss. 1 fancied that the parents of that child, were they yet living, would like to have seen how daintily nature had decked the last bed of their loved one. How painful were the circumstances attending the first burial in our train. A woman died one evening, (we were about ten days out) just as the moon had risen over the prairie, and swiftly the tidings sped through the camp. Next morning (it was the Sabbath day) she was buried laid to rest on a low, grassy hill near a stream. Never can I forget the grief of her chi'dren as the body was lowered into the ground. A net- work of stakes was placed across the grave to keep away the robber wolves, and a hymn was then sung, accompanied by the plaintive wail- ing of a clarionet. v= :J