This rapid rate soon brought us out of the high mountains and into a narrow valley when the stream became more moderate in its speed and we floated along easily enough.  In a little while after we struck this slack water, as we were rounding a point, I saw on a sand bar in the river, five or six elk, standing and looking at us with much curiosity.  I signaled for those behind to go to shore, while I did the same, and two or three of us took our guns and went carefully down along the bank, the thick brush hiding us from them, till we were in fair range, then selecting our game we fired on them.  A fine doe fell on the opposite bank, and a magnificent buck which Rogers and I selected, went below and crossed the river on our side.  We followed him down along the bank which was here a flat meadow with thick bunches of willows, and soon came pretty near to Mr. Elk who started off on a high and lofty trot.  As he passed an opening in the bushes I put a ball through his head and he fell.  He was a monster.  Rogers, who was a butcher, said it would weigh five hundred or six hundred pounds.  The horns were fully six feet long, and by placing the horns on the ground, point downwards, one could walk under the skull between them.  We packed the meat to our canoes, and staid up all night cutting the meat in strips and drying it, to reduce bulk and preserve it, and it made the finest kind of food, fit for an epicure.

Starting on again, the river lost more and more of of its rapidity as it came out into a still wider valley, and became quite sluggish.  We picked red berries that grew on bushes that overhung the water.  They were sour and might have been high cranberries.  One day I killed an otter, and afterward hearing a wild goose on shore, I went for the game and killed it on a small pond on which there were also some mallard duck.  I killed two of these.  When I fired, the ones not killed did not fly away, but rather swam toward me.  I suppose they never before had seen a man or heard the report of a gun.  On the shore around the place I saw a small bear track, but I did not have time to look for his bearship, and left, with the game already killed, and passed on down through this beautiful valley.

We saw one place where a large band of horses had crossed, and as the men with them must have had a raft, we were pretty sure that the men in charge of them were white men.  Another day we passed the mouth of a swollen stream which came in from the west side.  The water was thick with mud, and the fish, about a foot long, came to the top, with their noses out of water.  We tried to catch some, but could not hold them.  One night we camped on an island, and I took my gun and went over toward the west side where I killed a deer.  The boys hearing me shoot, came out, guns in hand, thinking I might need help, and I was very glad of their assistance.  To make our flour go as far as possible we ate very freely of meat, and having excellent appetites it disappeared very fast.