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He was brooding now, staring out over the country from under sullen brows. The little, interesting diversity of shapes had vanished from the scene; all that remained was a vast, dark matrix of sorrow and tragedy, the same in all the houses and the river-flats and the people and the birds; they were only shapen differently.

They were, all told, not more than six hundred forty persons who were thus lying on the river-flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its environs had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen, carrying in mournful trains their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home.

The rain fell heavily, and the garden looked forlorn, and so unlike the enchanting moonlighted place where I had been in the evening! The walks were like little canals; and the rose-bushes looked wet and chilly, like some gay young lady who had been caught in the rain in party-dress. It was low tide in the middle of the day, and the river-flats looked dismal.

Our first day's march was of about ten miles to one of the river-flats, which was covered with wild apple-trees, whose fruit, when stewed with sugar, we found palatable. The Lachen river, though still swollen, was comparatively clear; the rains usually ceasing, or at least moderating, in October: its water was about 5 degrees colder than in the beginning of August.