---
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: 3
published: 1910-01
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Lambourne, Alfred, "Extract from “The Old Journey”," *Improvement Era* 13, no. 3 (January 1910): 232–233.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1303unse
  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: improvementera1303unse
start_page: 232
end_page: 233
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1910-01)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1303unse
  publication_year: 1910
  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 1910, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Extract from “The Old Journey”


<!-- page:232 -->

EXTRACT FROM "THE OLD JOURNEY."
BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE,
Author of "Our Inland Sea," etc.

"Far in the West there lies a des°rt land, where the moun-
tains
Lift,   through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous
summits."

Joyfully we burst into song. "All hail ye snow-
capped mountains"        — there they were at       last.   O
what a time of gaiety followed, when the evening
meal was over, and the sweet-toned clarionet
assembled all in the open corral. The young men
and women, and the older ones, too, danced the
hours away, forgetful, in the merriment               of the

time, of the fatigues that           were past, and those
that were to come.           It   was such hours as these
that atoned for those which had been sad.
Small need to tell how expectancy grew upon
us as the number of miles ahead grew less and
less.    Even those who had grown apathetic and
trudged silently along, or sat questionless in the
wagons, began to manifest the same eager inter-
est which had marked the day of our starting out.

Wake up! wake up! wake up!                     One who was
ever brimming over with fun and frolic beat
together two old tin pans, and roused all laggards
and stay-a-beds.
The Golden West, the Valley, was our goal!
Has not the dream of the Pioneer been realized?

<!-- page:233 -->

TOWARD THE GOLDEN WEST.
From "a rough sketcbTby? Alfred Lambourne.

LARAMIE PEAK   — FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE HEIGHTS.
From a rough sketch by Alfred Lambourne.