“Last night we were alarmed by a new sort of enemy.  A buffalo swam over from the opposite side, and to the spot where lay one of our canoes, over which he clambered to the shore:  then, taking fright, he ran full speed up the bank towards our fires, and passed within eighteen inches of the heads of some of the men before the sentinel could make him change his course.  Still more alarmed, he ran down between four fires, and within a few inches of the heads of a second row of the men, and would have broken into our lodge if the barking of the dog had not stopped him.  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.  These buffaloes had been chased down the precipice in a way very common on the Missouri, by which vast herds are destroyed in a moment.  The mode of hunting is to select one of the most active and fleet young men, who is disguised by a buffalo-skin round his body; the skin of the head with the ears and horns being fastened on his own head in such a way as to deceive the buffalo.  Thus dressed, he fixes himself at a convenient distance between a herd of buffalo and any of the river precipices, which sometimes extend for some miles.  His companions