At the great bends, the women got out of the canoes and walked.  The old men also walked up.  We reached their lodges about 4 o’clock.  I exchanged canoes with Day Ghost, and gave him the difference.  We encamped at a late hour on the left bank (ascending), having come about forty-two miles—­a prodigious effort for the men.  To make amends, they ate prodigiously, and then lay down and slept with the nightmare.  Poor fellows, they screamed out in their sleep.  But they were up and ready again at 5 o’clock the next morning, with paddle and song.

PICTOGRAPHY.—­At 11 o’clock we landed, on the right bank, at the site of an old encampment, for breakfast.  I observed a symbolic inscription, in the ideographic manner, on a large blazed pine—­the Pinus resinosa.  It consisted of seven representative, and four symbolic devices, denoting the totems, or family names, of two heads of families, while encamped here, and their success in hunting and fishing.  The story told was this:  That two men, one of whom was of the Catfish clan, and the other of the clan of the Copper-tailed Bear—­a mythological animal—­had been rewarded with mysterious good luck, each according to his totem.  The Catfish man had caught six large catfish, and the Copper-tailed Bear man had killed a black bear.  The resin of the pine had covered the inscription, rendering it impervious to the weather.

NATURAL HISTORY.—­The nymphaea odorata borders the edge of the river.  Dr. H., this morning, found the bidens, which has but two localities in the United States besides.  He has also, within the last forty-eight hours, discovered a species of the locust, on the lower part of the Namakagun.  The fresh-water shells on this river are chiefly unios.  Wild rice, the palustris, is chiefly found at the two Pukwaewas, more rarely along the banks, but not in abundance.  The polyganum amphibia stands just in the edge of the water along its banks, and is now in flower.  The copper-head snake is found at the Yellow River; also the thirteen striped squirrel.

NUDE INDIANS.—­The Indians whom we met casually on the Namakagun, had nothing whatever on them, but the auzeaun.  They put on a blanket, when expecting a stranger.  The females have a petticoat and breastpiece.  When we passed the Woodpecker Chiefs party, an old woman, without upperments, who had been poling up one of the canoes, hastily landed, and hid herself in the bushes, when her exclamation of Nyau!  Nyau! revealed her position as we passed.  Two young married women had also landed, but stood on the banks with their children; one of the latter screaming, in fear, at the top of its lungs.

The men were much fatigued with this day’s journey.  They had to use the pole when the water became shallow.  Yet they went about thirty-six miles.  At night one of them screamed out with pains in his arms.  We were up and on the river again at six the next morning (the 4th).  The word with me was, PUSH; to accomplish the object, not a day, not half a day was to be lost, and the men all entered into the spirit of the thing.  At half past nine, we reached our breakfast place of the 30th, and there gummed our canoes.  We noticed yesterday the red haw, and pembina—­the latter of which is the service berry.  This day the calamus was often seen in quantity.