In the morning early we left our camp, and proceeded as usual by the cord.  We passed an island and two sandbars, and at the distance of two and a half miles we came to a handsome river which discharges itself on the south, and which we ascended to the distance of a mile and a half:  we called it Judith’s river:  it rises in the Rock mountains in about the same place with the Muscleshell and near the Yellowstone river.  Its entrance is one hundred yards wide from one bank to the other, the water occupying about seventy-five yards, and in greater quantity than that of the Muscleshell river, and though more rapid equally navigable, there being no stones or rocks in the bed, which is composed entirely of gravel and mud with some sand:  the water too is clearer than any which we have yet seen; and the low grounds, as far as we could discern, wider and more woody than those of the Missouri:  along its banks we observed some box-alder intermixed with the cottonwood and the willow; the undergrowth consisting of rosebushes, honeysuckle, and a little red willow.  There was a great abundance of the argalea or bighorned animals in the high country through which it passes, and a great number of the beaver in its waters:  just above the entrance of it we saw the fires of one hundred and twenty-six lodges, which appeared to have been deserted about twelve or fifteen days, and on the other side of the Missouri a large encampment, apparently made by the same nation.  On examining some moccasins which we found there, our Indian woman said that they did not belong to her own nation the Snake Indians, but she thought that they indicated a tribe on this side of the Rocky mountain, and to the north of the Missouri; indeed it is probable that these are the Minnetarees of fort de Prairie.  At the distance of six and a half miles the hills again approach the brink of the river, and the stones and rocks washed down from them form a very bad rapid, with rocks and ripples more numerous and difficult than those we passed on the 27th and 28th; here the same scene was renewed, and we had again to struggle and labour to preserve our small craft from being lost.  Near this spot are a few trees of the ash, the first we have seen for a great distance, and from which we named the place Ash Rapids.  On these hills there is but little timber, but the salts, coal, and other mineral appearances continue.  On the north we passed a precipice about one hundred and twenty feet high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred carcases of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the lower part of the hill must have carried off many of the dead.  These buffaloe had been chased down the precipice in a way very common on the Missouri, and by which vast herds are destroyed in a moment.  The mode of hunting is to select one of the most active and fleet young men, who is disguised by a buffaloe skin round his body; the skin of the head with the ears and horns fastened on his