tendants the
pumicestone and burnt earth. The salts and quartz are less abundant, and
generally speaking the country is if possible more rugged and barren
than that we passed yesterday; the only growth of the hills being a few
pine, spruce, and dwarf cedar, interspersed with an occasional contrast
once in the course of some miles, of several acres of level ground,
which supply a scanty subsistence for a few little cottonwood trees.

Soon after setting out we passed a small untimbered island on the south:
at about seven miles we reached a considerable bend which the river
makes towards the southeast, and in the evening, after making twelve and
a half miles, encamped on the south near two dead cottonwood trees, the
only timber for fuel which we could discover in the neighbourhood.

Tuesday, 28. The weather was dark and cloudy; the air smoky, and there
fell a few drops of rain. At ten o'clock we had again a slight
sprinkling of rain, attended with distant thunder, which is the first we
have heard since leaving the Mandans. We employed the line generally,
with the addition of the pole at the ripples and rocky points, which we
find more numerous and troublesome than those we passed yesterday. The
water is very rapid round these points, and we are sometimes obliged to
steer the canoes through the points of sharp rocks rising a few inches
above the surface of the water, and so near to each other that if our
ropes give way the force of the current drives the sides of the canoe
against them, and must inevitably upset them or dash them to pieces.
These cords are very slender, being almost all made of elkskin, and much
worn and rotted by exposure to the weather: several times they gave way,
but fortunately always in places where there was room for the canoe to
turn without striking the rock; yet with all our precautions it was with
infinite risk and labour that we passed these points. An Indian pole for
building floated down the river, and was worn at one end as if dragged
along the ground in travelling; several other articles were also brought
down by the current, which indicate that the Indians are probably at no
great distance above us, and judging from a football which resembles
those used by the Minnetarees near the Mandans, we conjecture that they
must be a band of the Minnetarees of fort de Prairie. The appearance of
the river and the surrounding country continued as usual, till towards
evening, at about fifteen miles, we r