day was clear and pleasant, but last night was
very cold and there was a white frost.

Monday 5. The Indians are all out on their hunting parties: a camp of
Mandans caught within two days one hundred goats a short distance below
us: their mode of hunting them is to form a large strong pen or fold,
from which a fence made of bushes gradually widens on each side: the
animals are surrounded by the hunters and gently driven towards this
pen, in which they imperceptibly find themselves inclosed and are then
at the mercy of the hunters. The weather is cloudy and the wind moderate
from the northwest. Late at night we were awaked by the sergeant on
guard to see the beautiful phenomenon called the northern light: along
the northern sky was a large space occupied by a light of a pale but
brilliant white colour: which rising from the horizon extended itself to
nearly twenty degrees above it. After glittering for some time its
colours would be overcast, and almost obscured, but again it would burst
out with renewed beauty; the uniform colour was pale light, but its
shapes were various and fantastic: at times the sky was lined with light
coloured streaks rising perpendicularly from the horizon, and gradually
expanding into a body of light in which we could trace the floating
columns sometimes advancing, sometimes retreating and shaping into
infinite forms, the space in which they moved. It all faded away before
the morning. At daylight,

Tuesday 6, the clouds to the north were darkening and the wind rose high
from the northwest at eight o'clock, and continued cold during the day.
Mr. Gravelines and four others who came with us returned to the Ricaras
in a small periogue, we gave him directions to accompany some of the
Ricara chiefs to the seat of government in the spring.

Wednesday 7. The day was temperate but cloudy and foggy, and we were
enabled to go on with our work with much expedition.

Thursday 8. The morning again cloudy; our huts advance very well, and we
are visited by numbers of Indians who come to let their horses graze
near us: in the day the horses are let loose in quest of grass, in the
night they are collected and receive an armful of small boughs of the
cottonwood, which being very juicy, soft and brittle, form nutritious
and agreeable food: the frost this morning was very severe, the weather
during the day cloudy and the wind from the northwest. We procured from
an Indian a weasel perfectly white except the ex