lodge with the family.  In the summer they ramble in the plains in the vicinity of the camp, and feed on the grass, but during cold weather the squaws cut down the cottonwood trees as they are wanted, and the horses feed on the boughs and bark of the tender branches, which are also brought into the lodges at night and placed near them.  These animals are very severely treated; for whole days they are pursuing the buffaloe, or burdened with the fruits of the chase, during which they scarcely ever taste food, and at night return to a scanty allowance of wood; yet the spirit of this valuable animal sustains him through all these difficulties, and he is rarely deficient either in flesh or vigour.

Wednesday 13.  The morning was cloudy, the thermometer at 2 degrees below 0, the wind from the southeast.  Captain Clarke returned last evening with all his hunting party:  during their excursion they had killed forty deer, three buffaloe, and sixteen elk; but most of the game was too lean for use, and the wolves, who regard whatever lies out at night as their own, had appropriated a large part of it:  when he left the fort on the 4th instant, he descended on the ice twenty-two miles to New Mandan island, near some of their old villages, and encamped, having killed nothing, and therefore without food for the night.

Early on the 5th, the hunters went out and killed two buffaloe and a deer, but the last only could be used, the others being too lean.  After breakfast they proceeded down to an Indian lodge and hunted during the day:  the next morning, 6th, they encamped forty-four miles from the fort on a sand point near the mouth of a creek on the southwest side, which they call Hunting creek, and during this and the following day hunted through all the adjoining plains, with much success, having killed a number of deer and elk.  On the 8th, the best of the meat was sent with the horses to the fort, and such parts of the remainder as were fit for use were brought to a point of the river three miles below, and after the bones were taken out, secured in pens built of logs, so as to keep off the wolves, ravens and magpies, who are very numerous and constantly disappoint the hunter of his prey:  they then went to the low grounds near the Chisshetaw river where they encamped, but saw nothing except some wolves on the hills, and a number of buffaloe too poor to be worth hunting.  The next morning 9th, as there was no game and it would have been inconvenient to send it back sixty miles to the fort, they returned up the river, and for three days hunted along the banks and plains, and reached the fort in the evening of the twelfth much fatigued, having walked thirty miles that day on the ice and through the snow in many places knee deep, the moccasins too being nearly worn out:  the only game which they saw besides what is mentioned, was some growse on the sandbars in the river.