The country has now become desert and barren:  the appearances of coal, burnt earth, pumicestone, salts, and quartz, continue as yesterday:  but there is no timber except the thinly scattered pine and spruce on the summits of the hills, or along the sides.  The only animals we have observed are the elk, the bighorn, and the hare, common in this country.  In the plain where we lie are two Indian cabins made of sticks, and during the last few days we have passed several others in the points of timber on the river.

Monday, 27.  The wind was so high that we did not start till ten o’clock, and even then were obliged to use the line during the greater part of the day.  The river has become very rapid with a very perceptible descent:  its general width is about two hundred yards:  the shoals too are more frequent, and the rocky points at the mouth of the gullies more troublesome to pass:  great quantities of this stone lie in the river and on its banks, and seem to have fallen down as the rain washed away the clay and sand in which they were imbedded.  The water is bordered by high rugged bluffs, composed of irregular but horizontal stratas of yellow and brown or black clay, brown and yellowish white sand, soft yellowish white sandstone:  hard dark brown freestone; and also large round kidney formed irregular separate masses of a hard black ironstone, imbedded in the clay and sand; some coal or carbonated wood also makes its appearance in the cliffs, as do also its usual attendants the pumicestone and burnt earth.  The salts and quartz are less abundant, and generally speaking the country is if possible more rugged and barren than that we passed yesterday; the only growth of the hills being a few pine, spruce, and dwarf cedar, interspersed with an occasional contrast once in the course of some miles, of several acres of level ground, which supply a scanty subsistence for a few little cottonwood trees.

Soon after setting out we passed a small untimbered island on the south:  at about seven miles we reached a considerable bend which the river makes towards the southeast, and in the evening, after making twelve and a half miles, encamped on the south near two dead cottonwood trees, the only timber for fuel which we could discover in the neighbourhood.

Tuesday, 28.  The weather was dark and cloudy; the air smoky, and there fell a few drops of rain.  At ten o’clock we had again a slight sprinkling of rain, attended with distant thunder, which is the first we have heard since leaving the Mandans.  We employed the line generally, with the addition of the pole at the ripples and rocky points, which we find more numerous and troublesome than those we passed yesterday.  The water is very rapid round these points, and we are sometimes obliged to steer the canoes through the points of sharp rocks rising a few inches above the surface of the water, and so near to each other that if our ropes give way the force of the current drives the sides of the canoe