heir husbands and fathers, who
boast how often their skill and industry as hunters has supplied them
with the means of intoxication: in this, as in their other habits and
customs, they resemble the Sioux from whom they are descended: the trade
with the Assiniboins and Knistenaux is encouraged by the British,
because it procures provision for their _engages_ on their return from
Rainy lake to the English river and the Athabasky country where they
winter; these men being obliged during that voyage to pass rapidly
through a country but scantily supplied with game. We halted for dinner
near a large village of burrowing squirrels, who we observe generally
select a southeasterly exposure, though they are sometimes found in the
plains. At ten and a quarter miles we came to the lower point of an
island, which from the day of our arrival there we called Sunday
island: here the river washes the bases of the hills on both sides and
above the island, which with its sandbar extends a mile and a half: two
small creeks fall in from the south; the uppermost of these, which is
the largest, we called Chaboneau's creek, after our interpreter who once
encamped on it several weeks with a party of Indians. Beyond this no
white man had ever been except two Frenchmen, one of whom Lapage is with
us, and who having lost their way straggled a few miles further, though
to what point we could not ascertain: about a mile and a half beyond
this island we encamped on a point of woodland on the north, having made
in all fourteen miles.

The Assiniboins have so recently left the river that game is scarce and
shy. One of the hunters shot at an otter last evening; a buffaloe too
was killed, and an elk, both so poor as to be almost unfit for use; two
white bear were also seen, and a muskrat swimming across the river. The
river continues wide and of about the same rapidity as the ordinary
current of the Ohio. The low grounds are wide, the moister parts
containing timber, the upland extremely broken, without wood, and in
some places seem as if they had slipped down in masses of several acres
in surface. The mineral appearances of salts, coal, and sulphur, with
the burnt hill and pumicestone continue, and a bituminous water about
the colour of strong lye, with the taste of glauber salts and a slight
tincture of allum. Many geese were feeding in the prairies, and a number
of magpies who build their nest much like those of the blackbird in
trees, and composed o