it may be passed in canoes with setting poles, while a few miles above it is upwards of a mile in width:  ten miles beyond Onion creek we came to another, discharging itself on the north in the centre of a deep bend:  on ascending it for about a mile and a half, we found it to be the discharge of a pond or small lake, which seemed to have been once the bed of the Missouri:  near this lake were the remains of forty-three temporary lodges which seem to belong to the Assiniboins, who are now on the river of the same name.  A great number of swan and geese were also in it, and from this circumstance we named the creek Goose creek, and the lake by the same name:  these geese we observe do not build their nests on the ground or in sandbars, but in the tops of lofty cottonwood trees:  we saw some elk and buffaloe to-day but at too great a distance to obtain any of them, though a number of the carcases of the latter animal are strewed along the shores, having fallen through the ice, and been swept along when the river broke up.  More bald eagles are seen on this part of the Missouri than we have previously met with; the small or common hawk, common in most parts of the United States, are also found here:  great quantities of geese are feeding in the prairies, and one flock of white brant or goose with black wings, and some gray brant with them pass up river, and from their flight they seem to proceed much farther to the northwest.  We killed two antelopes which were very lean, and caught last night two beaver:  the French hunters who had procured seven, thinking the neighborhood of the Little Missouri a convenient hunting ground for that animal, remained behind there:  in the evening we encamped in a beautiful plain on the north thirty feet above the river, having made twenty-two and a half miles.

Sunday 14.  We set off early with pleasant and fair weather:  a dog joined us, which we suppose had strayed from the Assiniboin camp on the lake.  At two and a half miles we passed timbered low grounds and a small creek:  in these low grounds are several uninhabited lodges built with the boughs of the elm, and the remains of two recent encampments, which from the hoops of small kegs found in them we judged could belong to Assiniboins only, as they are the only Missouri Indians who use spirituous liquors:  of these they are so passionately fond that it forms their chief inducement to visit the British on the Assiniboin, to whom they barter for kegs of rum their dried and pounded meat, their grease, and the skins of large and small wolves, and small foxes.  The dangerous exchange is transported to their camps with their friends and relations, and soon exhausted in brutal intoxication:  so far from considering drunkenness as disgraceful, the women and children are permitted and invited to share in these excesses with their husbands and fathers, who boast how often their skill and industry as hunters has supplied them with the means of intoxication:  in this, as in their other habits and customs, they