re similar
in point of soil. From the Mandan villages to this place the country is
hilly and irregular, with the same appearance of glauber salts and
carbonated wood, the low grounds smooth, sandy, and partially covered
with cottonwood and small ash; at some distance back there are extensive
plains of a good soil, but without timber or water.

We found great quantities of small onions which grow single, the bulb of
an oval form, white, about the size of a bullet with a leaf resembling
that of the chive. On the side of a neighbouring hill, there is a
species of dwarf cedar: it spreads its limbs along the surface of the
earth, which it almost conceals by its closeness and thickness, and is
sometimes covered by it, having always a number of roots on the under
side, while on the upper are a quantity of shoots which with their
leaves seldom rise higher than six or eight inches; it is an evergreen,
its leaf more delicate than that of the common cedar, though the taste
and smell is the same.

The country around has been so recently hunted that the game are
extremely shy, so that a white rabbit, two beaver, a deer, and a bald
eagle were all that we could procure. The weather had been clear, warm,
and pleasant in the morning, but about three we had a squall of high
wind and rain with some thunder, which lasted till after sunset when it
again cleared off.

Saturday 13. We set out at sunrise, and at nine o'clock having the wind
in our favour went on rapidly past a timbered low ground on the south,
and a creek on the north at the distance of nine miles, which we called
Onion creek, from the quantity of that plant which grows in the plains
near it: this creek is about sixteen yards wide at a mile and a half
above its mouth, it discharges more water than is usual for creeks of
that size in this country, but the whole plain which it waters is
totally destitute of timber. The Missouri itself widens very remarkably
just above the junction with the Little Missouri: immediately at the
entrance of the latter, it is not more than two hundred yards wide, and
so shallow that it may be passed in canoes with setting poles, while a
few miles above it is upwards of a mile in width: ten miles beyond Onion
creek we came to another, discharging itself on the north in the centre
of a deep bend: on ascending it for about a mile and a half, we found it
to be the discharge of a pond or small lake, which seemed to have been
once the bed of the Missour