The action! The search for the Fountain of Youth, the desire for knowledge, the thirst for gold, these have led men into the wilds; it has taken them to brave unknown dangers in unknown lands. Yes, these, the Propaganda and the love of Freedom, but neither is stronger than the desire for Religious Liberty. Ponce de Leon in the Land of Flowers; Lewis and Clark making their way along the Oregon, the Catholic Fathers, the gold-seekers of California, and the Puritans of New England--these are our examples. And like the latter were the Pioneers who preceded us along our way. And our company, too, such it was that led them. Near the frontier I had looked into a deserted cabin--it revealed the ending of a drama. He who would have found the magic waters, the home and the gold-seeker left behind them many a lonely grave. The Propagandist, the Lover of Freedom left their bones in many an unknown spot. And the Pioneers? They, too, must leave their dead. He who built that deserted cabin had met with failure,--death was the end. But the seekers of Religious Liberty? Surely they must have found the greater consolation in the hour of trial; to them must have come more quickly the thought of peace. Action! It is true; one might have become easily wearied of the monotonous trip. The shifting panorama might have become monotonous in its shifting. Monotonous, I mean, were it not for, I repeat the word--the action. The plains, the streams, the rocks, the hills, all became important because these led the way. Ever my thought is of the road. Countless in numbers almost were the graves, on plain and mountain, those silent witnesses 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, beneath groves of trees, or among piles of rock, the graves were made. We left the new mounds to be scorched by the sun, beaten upon by the tempests, or for beauty or desolation to gather around 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 by 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 bright, green moss. I fancied then that the parents of that child were they yet living, the mother, who, no doubt, had left that grave with such agony of heart, such blinding or tearless grief, would have liked, indeed, to have heard the sweet singing of the wild birds in the rose thicket, and have seen how daintily nature had decked that last bed of the loved one.