We find the prickly pear, one of the greatest beauties as well as the greatest inconveniences of the plains, now in full bloom.  The sunflower too, a plant common on every part of the Missouri from its entrance to this place, is here very abundant and in bloom.  The lambsquarter, wild-cucumber, sandrush, and narrowdock are also common.  Two elk, a deer, and an otter, were our game to-day.

The river has now become so much more crooked than below that we omit taking all its short meanders, but note only its general course, and lay down the small bends on our daily chart by the eye.  The general width is from one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards.  Along the banks are large beds of sand raised above the plains, and as they always appear on the sides of the river opposite to the southwest exposure, seem obviously brought there from the channel of the river by the incessant winds from that quarter:  we find also more timber than for a great distance below the falls.

Tuesday 16.  There was a heavy dew last night.  We soon passed about forty little booths, formed of willow bushes as a shelter against the sun.  These seemed to have been deserted about ten days, and as we supposed by the Snake Indians, or Shoshonees, whom we hope soon to meet, as they appeared from the tracks to have a number of horses with them.  At three and three quarter miles we passed a creek or run in a bend on the left side, and four miles further another run or small rivulet on the right.  After breakfasting on a buffaloe shot by one of the hunters, captain Lewis resolved to go on ahead of the party to the point where the river enters the Rocky mountains and make the necessary observations before our arrival.  He therefore set out with Drewyer and two of the sick men to whom he supposed the walk would be useful:  he travelled on the north side of the river through a handsome level plain, which continued on the opposite side also, and at the distance of eight miles passed a small stream on which he observed a considerable quantity of the aspen tree.  A little before twelve o’clock he halted on a bend to the north in a low ground well covered with timber, about four and a half miles below the mountains, and obtained a meridian altitude, by which he found the latitude was N. 46 degrees 46’ 50” 2"’.  His route then lay through a high waving plain to a rapid where the Missouri first leaves the Rocky mountains, and here he encamped for the night.

In the meantime we had proceeded after breakfast one mile to a bend in the left, opposite to which was the frame of a large lodge situated in the prairie, constructed like that already mentioned above the Whitebear islands, but only sixty feet in diameter:  round it were the remains of about eighty leathern lodges, all which seemed to have been built during the last autumn; within the next fifteen and a quarter miles we passed ten islands, on the last of which we encamped near the right shore, having made twenty-three miles.  The next morning,