the
middle of the river, where we spent the night, our progress being
sixteen miles. On the opposite shore, we saw a house among the willows
and a boy to whom we called, and brought him on board. He proved to be a
young Frenchman in the employ of a Mr. Valle a trader, who is now here
pursuing his commerce with the Sioux.

Tuesday, October 2. There had been a violent wind from S.E. during the
night, which having moderated we set sail with Mr. Valle, who visited us
this morning and accompanied us for two miles. He is one of three French
traders who have halted here, expecting the Sioux who are coming down
from the Ricaras, where they now are, for the purposes of traffic. Mr.
Valle tells us that he passed the last winter three hundred leagues up
the Chayenne under the Black mountains. That river he represents as very
rapid, liable to sudden swells, the bed and shores formed of course
gravel, and difficult of ascent even for canoes. One hundred leagues
from its mouth it divides into two branches, one coming from the south,
the other at forty leagues from the junction enters the Black mountains.
The land which it waters from the Missouri to the Black mountains,
resembles the country on the Missouri, except that the former has even
less timber, and of that the greater proportion is cedar. The Chayennes
reside chiefly on the heads of the river, and steal horses from the
Spanish settlement, a plundering excursion which they perform in a
month's time. The Black mountains he observes are very high, covered
with great quantities of pine, and in some parts the snow remains during
the summer. There are also great quantities of goats, white bear,
prairie cocks, and a species of animal which from his description must
resemble a small elk, with large circular horns.

At two and a half miles we had passed a willow island on the south, on
the north side of the river were dark bluffs, and on the south low rich
prairies. We took a meridian altitude on our arrival at the upper end of
the isthmus of the bend, which we called the Lookout bend, and found the
latitude to be 44 degrees 19' 36". This bend is nearly twenty miles
round, and not more than two miles across.

In the afternoon we heard a shot fired, and not long after observed some
Indians on a hill: one of them came to the shore and wished us to land,
as there were twenty lodges of Yanktons or Boisbrule there; we declined
doing so, telling him that we had already seen his chiefs, an