Of other game they saw a great abundance even in their short march of nine miles.

Wednesday 12.  This morning captain Lewis left the bank of the river in order to avoid the steep ravines which generally run from the shore to the distance of one or two miles in the plain:  having reached the opened country he went for twelve miles in a course a little to the west of southwest, when the sun becoming warm by nine o’clock, he returned to the river in quest of water and to kill something for breakfast, there being no water in the plain, and the buffaloe discovering them before they came within gunshot took to flight.  They reached the banks in a handsome open low ground with cottonwood, after three miles walk.  Here they saw two large brown bears, and killed them both at the first fire, a circumstance which has never before occurred since we have seen that animal.  Having made a meal of a part and hung the remainder on a tree with a note for captain Clarke, they again ascended the bluffs into the open plains.  Here they saw great numbers of the burrowing squirrel, also some wolves, antelopes, muledeer, and vast herds of buffaloe.  They soon crossed a ridge considerably higher than the surrounding plains, and from its top had a beautiful view of the Rocky mountains, which are now completely covered with snow:  their general course is from southeast to the north of northwest, and they seem to consist of several ranges which successively rise above each other till the most distant mingles with the clouds.  After travelling twelve miles they again met the river, where there was a handsome plain of cottonwood; and although it was not sunset, and they had only come twenty-seven miles, yet captain Lewis felt weak from his late disorder, and therefore determined to go no further that night.  In the course of the day they killed a quantity of game, and saw some signs of otter as well as beaver, and many tracks of the brown bear:  they also caught great quantities of the white fish mentioned yesterday.  With the broad-leafed cottonwood, which has formed the principal timber of the Missouri, is here mixed another species differing from the first only in the narrowness of its leaf and the greater thickness of its bark.  The leaf is long, oval, acutely pointed, about two and a half or three inches long and from three quarters of an inch to an inch in width; it is smooth and thick sometimes slightly grooved or channeled with the margin a little serrate, the upper disk of a common, the lower of a whitish green.  This species seems to be preferred by the beaver to the broad-leaved, probably because the former affords a deeper and softer bark.