the timber is larger and more abundant than we have seen it on the Missouri for several hundred miles.  The soil too is good, for the grass and weeds reach about two feet high, being the tallest we have observed this season, though on the high plains and prairies the grass is at no season above three inches in height.  Among these weeds are the sandrush, and nettle in small quantities; the plains are still infested by great numbers of the small birds already mentioned, among whom is the brown curlew.  The current of the river is here extremely gentle; the buffaloe have not yet quite gone, for the hunters brought in three in very good order.  It requires some diligence to supply us plentifully, for as we reserve our parched meal for the Rocky mountains, where we do not expect to find much game, our principal article of food is meat, and the consumption of the whole thirty-two persons belonging to the party, amounts to four deer, an elk and a deer, one buffaloe every twenty four hours.  The musquitoes and gnats persecute us as violently as below, so that we can get no sleep unless defended by biers, with which we are all provided.  We here found several plants hitherto unknown to us, and of which we preserved specimens.

Serjeant Ordway proceeded with the six canoes five miles up the river, but the wind becoming so high as to wet the baggage he was obliged to unload and dry it.  The wind abated at five o’clock in the evening, when he again proceeded eight miles and encamped.  The next morning,

Sunday, July 14, he joined us about noon.  On leaving the Whitebear camp he passed at a short distance a little creek or run coming in on the left.  This had been already examined and called Flattery run; it contains back water only, with very extensive low grounds, which rising into large plains reach the mountains on the east; then passed a willow island on the left within one mile and a half, and reached two miles further a cliff of rocks in a bend on the same side.  In the course of another mile and a half he passed two islands covered with cottonwood, box-alder, sweet-willow, and the usual undergrowth, like that of the Whitebear islands.  At thirteen and three quarter miles he came to the mouth of a small creek on the left; within the following nine miles he passed three timbered islands, and after making twenty-three and a quarter miles from the lower camp, arrived at the point of woodland on the north where the canoes were constructed.

The day was fair and warm; the men worked very industriously, and were enabled by the evening to lanch the boats, which now want only seats and oars to be complete.  One of them is twenty-five, the other thirty-three feet in length and three feet wide.  Captain Lewis walked out between three and four miles over the rocky bluffs to a high situation, two miles from the river, a little below Fort Mountain creek.  The country which he saw was in most parts level, but occasionally became varied by gentle rises and descents, but with no timber except along the water.  From this position, the point at which the Missouri enters the first chain of the Rocky mountains bore south 28 degrees west about twenty-five miles, according to our estimate.