resemble the Sioux from whom they are descended:  the trade with the Assiniboins and Knistenaux is encouraged by the British, because it procures provision for their engages on their return from Rainy lake to the English river and the Athabasky country where they winter; these men being obliged during that voyage to pass rapidly through a country but scantily supplied with game.  We halted for dinner near a large village of burrowing squirrels, who we observe generally select a southeasterly exposure, though they are sometimes found in the plains.  At ten and a quarter miles we came to the lower point of an island, which from the day of our arrival there we called Sunday island:  here the river washes the bases of the hills on both sides and above the island, which with its sandbar extends a mile and a half:  two small creeks fall in from the south; the uppermost of these, which is the largest, we called Chaboneau’s creek, after our interpreter who once encamped on it several weeks with a party of Indians.  Beyond this no white man had ever been except two Frenchmen, one of whom Lapage is with us, and who having lost their way straggled a few miles further, though to what point we could not ascertain:  about a mile and a half beyond this island we encamped on a point of woodland on the north, having made in all fourteen miles.

The Assiniboins have so recently left the river that game is scarce and shy.  One of the hunters shot at an otter last evening; a buffaloe too was killed, and an elk, both so poor as to be almost unfit for use; two white bear were also seen, and a muskrat swimming across the river.  The river continues wide and of about the same rapidity as the ordinary current of the Ohio.  The low grounds are wide, the moister parts containing timber, the upland extremely broken, without wood, and in some places seem as if they had slipped down in masses of several acres in surface.  The mineral appearances of salts, coal, and sulphur, with the burnt hill and pumicestone continue, and a bituminous water about the colour of strong lye, with the taste of glauber salts and a slight tincture of allum.  Many geese were feeding in the prairies, and a number of magpies who build their nest much like those of the blackbird in trees, and composed of small sticks, leaves and grass, open at top:  the egg is of a bluish brown color, freckled with reddish brown spots.  We also killed a large hooting owl resembling that of the United States, except that it was more booted and clad with feathers.  On the hills are many aromatic herbs, resembling in taste, smell and appearance the sage, hysop, wormwood, southern wood, juniper and dwarf cedar; a plant also about two or three feet high, similar to the camphor in smell and taste, and another plant of the same size, with a long, narrow, smooth, soft leaf, of an agreeable smell and flavour, which is a favourite food of the antelope, whose necks are often perfumed by rubbing against it.