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° 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, and that they
might learn from Mr. Durion the nature of the talk we had delivered to
them. At nine miles we came to the lower point of a long island on the
north, the banks of the south side of the river being high, those of the
north forming a low rich prairie. We coasted along this island, which we
called Caution island, and after passing a small creek on the south
encamped on a sandbar in the middle of the river, having made twelve
miles. The wind changed to the northwest, and became very high and cold.
The current of the river is less rapid, and the water though of the same
colour contains less sediment than below the Chayenne, but its width
continues the same. We were not able to hunt to-day; for as there are so
many Indians in the neighbourhood, we were in constant expectation of