He suddenly turned to the right, and was out of sight in
a moment, leaving us all in confusion, every one seizing his rifle and
inquiring the cause of the alarm. On learning what had happened, we had
to rejoice at suffering no more injury than some damage to the guns that
were in the canoe which the buffalo crossed. . . .
"We passed an island and two sand-bars, and at the distance of two
and a half miles came to a handsome river, which discharges itself on
the South, and which we ascended to the distance of a mile and a half:
we called it Judith's River. It rises in the Rocky Mountains, in about
the same place with the Musselshell, and near the Yellowstone River. Its
entrance is one hundred yards wide from one bank to the other, the water
occupying about seventy-five yards, and being in greater quantity than
that of the Musselshell River. . . . There were great numbers of the
argalea, or bighorned animals, in the high country through which it
passes, and of beaver in its waters. Just above the entrance of it we
saw the ashes of the fires of one hundred and twenty-six lodges, which
appeared to have been deserted about twelve or fifteen days."
Leaving Judith's River, named for a sweet Virginia lass, the explorers
sailed, or were towed, seventeen miles up the river, where they camped
at the mouth of a bold, running river to which they gave the name
of Slaughter River. The stream is now known as the Arrow; the
appropriateness of the title conferred on the stream by Lewis and Clark
appears from the story which they tell of their experience just below
"Slaughter River," as follows:
"On the north we passed a precipice about one hundred and twenty feet
high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred
carcasses of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the
lower part of the hill must have carried off many of the dead.
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