And we went spinning away at a round rate too.
We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains behind, and sped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through long ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen--monuments of the huge emigration of other days--and here and there were up-ended boards or small piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place of more precious remains.
It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayote and the raven--which is but another name for desolation and utter solitude.

On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague desert.

It was because of the phosphorus in the bones.

But no scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted by one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.
At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it--indeed, I did not even see this, for it was too dark.

We fastened down the curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in in twenty places, nothwithstanding.