_September 11_. Bid farewell to my family and friends and started on my eastern mission in company with several elders and friends, who were going to the States. We met, on the journey across the plains, several companies, chiefly from Europe. Some of them were companies traveling with ox teams, and several hand cart companies. The first hand cart company we met was near Green River, which consisted of two hundred and thirty men, women and children. These had crossed the plains from Iowa City--some 1,200 miles--the women as well as men drawing hand carts and the children walking. They had travelled twenty miles a day and sometimes more. Their faces were much sun-burnt and their lips parched; but cheerfulness reigned in every heart, and joy seemed to beam on every countenance. The company gathered around us and I tried to address them, observing that this was a new era in American as well as Church history; but my utterance was choked, and I had to make the third trial before I could overcome my emotions. We had passed on, nothing worthy of note occurring until we arrived at Fort Kearney. _October 17_.--We arrived at Fort Kearney; here the death of A. W. Babbitt, and others with him was confirmed. The commanding officer of the fort came to me and said he had an account of Babbitt's death from the Indians themselves; and that he had obtained his papers and accounts, which he would deliver to Babbitt's wife, if she would come. We pursued our long and wearisome journey through Iowa and Illinois. On the way we saw Nauvoo and the ruins of the temple in the distance. This called up reflections which I will not attempt to describe. I thought of the temple and city in their glory; of the twenty thousand Saints once busy there; of the vast congregations once assembled there in prayer and praise; of the martyred prophets and Saints; of the wholesale murder and plunder perpetrated by ruthless mobs. I thought of my once happy but now fallen country. I greatly desired relief by tears, but tears would not come to my relief. I felt too deeply; but I felt some relief in assuring myself that at last justice would triumph and righteousness reign.