The mast of the white pirogue, which we
mean to leave behind, supplied us with two axle-trees.
"There are vast quantities of buffalo feeding on the plains or watering
in the river, which is also strewed with the floating carcasses and
limbs of these animals. They go in large herds to water about the falls,
and as all the passages to the river near that place are narrow and
steep, the foremost are pressed into the river by the impatience of
those behind. In this way we have seen ten or a dozen disappear over
the falls in a few minutes. They afford excellent food for the wolves,
bears, and birds of prey; which circumstance may account for the
reluctance of the bears to yield their dominion over the neighborhood.
"The pirogue was drawn up a little below our camp, and secured in a
thick copse of willow-bushes. We now began to form a cache or place
of deposit, and to dry our goods and other articles which required
inspection. The wagons are completed. Our hunters brought us ten deer,
and we shot two out of a herd of buffalo that came to water at Sulphur
Spring. There is a species of gooseberry, growing abundantly among the
rocks on the sides of the cliffs. It is now ripe, of a pale red color,
about the size of the common gooseberry, and like it is an ovate
pericarp of soft pulp enveloping a number of small whitish seeds, and
consisting of a yellowish, slimy, mucilaginous substance, with a sweet
taste; the surface of the berry is covered glutinous, adhesive matter,
and its fruit, though ripe, retains its withered corolla.
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