mouth in a straight line a little to the south of west, so that both the Little Missouri and Knife river have been laid down too far southwest.  It enters the Missouri with a bold current, and is one hundred and thirty-four yards wide, but its greatest depth is two feet and a half, and this joined to its rapidity and its sandbars, make the navigation difficult except for canoes, which may ascend it for a considerable distance.  At the mouth, and as far as we could discern from the hills between the two rivers about three miles from their junction, the country is much broken, the soil consisting of a deep rich dark coloured loam, intermixed with a small proportion of fine sand and covered generally with a short grass resembling blue grass.  In its colour, the nature of its bed, and its general appearance, it resembles so much the Missouri as to induce a belief that the countries they water are similar in point of soil.  From the Mandan villages to this place the country is hilly and irregular, with the same appearance of glauber salts and carbonated wood, the low grounds smooth, sandy, and partially covered with cottonwood and small ash; at some distance back there are extensive plains of a good soil, but without timber or water.

We found great quantities of small onions which grow single, the bulb of an oval form, white, about the size of a bullet with a leaf resembling that of the chive.  On the side of a neighbouring hill, there is a species of dwarf cedar:  it spreads its limbs along the surface of the earth, which it almost conceals by its closeness and thickness, and is sometimes covered by it, having always a number of roots on the under side, while on the upper are a quantity of shoots which with their leaves seldom rise higher than six or eight inches; it is an evergreen, its leaf more delicate than that of the common cedar, though the taste and smell is the same.

The country around has been so recently hunted that the game are extremely shy, so that a white rabbit, two beaver, a deer, and a bald eagle were all that we could procure.  The weather had been clear, warm, and pleasant in the morning, but about three we had a squall of high wind and rain with some thunder, which lasted till after sunset when it again cleared off.

Saturday 13.  We set out at sunrise, and at nine o’clock having the wind in our favour went on rapidly past a timbered low ground on the south, and a creek on the north at the distance of nine miles, which we called Onion creek, from the quantity of that plant which grows in the plains near it:  this creek is about sixteen yards wide at a mile and a half above its mouth, it discharges more water than is usual for creeks of that size in this country, but the whole plain which it waters is totally destitute of timber.  The Missouri itself widens very remarkably just above the junction with the Little Missouri:  immediately at the entrance of the latter, it is not more than two hundred yards wide, and so shallow that