it for three miles, found that it continued of the same width with a gentle current, and pursuing its course about north 30 degrees west, through an extensive, fertile, and beautiful valley, but without a single tree.  The water is clear, and has a brownish yellow tint; at this place the highlands which yesterday and to-day had approached so near the river became lower, and receding from the water left a valley seven or eight miles wide.

Tuesday 30.  The wind was high from the north during last evening and continued so this morning:  we however continued, and found the river more winding than usual and with a number of sand islands and bars, on one of which last we encamped at the distance of twenty-four miles.  The low grounds are fertile and extensive but with very little timber, and that cottonwood, very bad of its kind, being too small for planks, and broken and dead at the top and unsound in the centre of the trunk.  We passed some ancient lodges of driftwood which do not appear to have been lately inhabited.  The game continues abundant:  we killed the largest male elk we have yet seen; on placing it in its natural erect position, we found that it measured five feet three inches from the point of the hoof to the top of the shoulder.  The antelopes are yet lean and the females are with young:  this fleet and quick-sighted animal is generally the victim of its curiosity:  when they first see the hunters they run with great velocity; if he lies down on the ground and lifts up his arm, his hat, or his foot, the antelope returns on a light trot to look at the object, and sometimes goes and returns two or three times till they approach within reach of the rifle; so too they sometimes leave their flock to go and look at the wolves who crouch down, and if the antelope be frightened at first repeat the same manoeuvre, and sometimes relieve each other till they decoy it from the party when they seize it.  But generally the wolves take them as they are crossing the rivers, for although swift of foot they are not good swimmers.

Wednesday, May 1.  The wind was in our favour and we were enabled to use the sails till twelve o’clock, when the wind became so high and squally that we were forced to come to at the distance of ten miles on the south, in a low ground stocked with cottonwood, and remain there during the day; one of the canoes being separated from us, and not able to cross over in consequence of the high waves.  The country around is more pleasant than that through which we had passed for several days, the hills being lower, the low grounds wider and better supplied with timber, which consists principally of cottonwood:  the undergrowth willow on the banks and sandbars, rosebushes, redwillow, and the broad-leafed willow in the low plains, while the high country on both sides is one extensive plain without wood, though the soil is a dark, rich, mellow loam.  Our hunters killed a buffaloe, an elk, a goat, and two beaver, and also a bird of the plover kind.