the name of Ordway’s creek, after serjeant John Ordway.  At two miles beyond this the valley widens:  we passed several bends of the river, and encamped in the centre of one on the south, having made twenty-one miles.  Here we found a small grove of the narrow-leafed cottonwood, there being no longer any of the broad-leafed kind since we entered the mountains.  The water of these rivulets which come down from the mountains is very cold, pure, and well tasted.  Along their banks as well as on the Missouri the aspen is very common, but of a small kind.  The river is somewhat wider than we found it yesterday; the hills more distant from the river and not so high; there are some pines on the mountains, but they are principally confined to the upper regions of them:  the low grounds are still narrower and have little or no timber.  The soil near the river is good, and produces a luxuriant growth of grass and weeds; among these productions the sunflower holds a very distinguished place.  For several days past we have observed a species of flax in the low grounds, the leaf-stem and pericarp of which resemble those of the flax commonly cultivated in the United States:  the stem rises to the height of two and a half or three feet, and spring to the number of eight or ten from the same root, with a strong thick bark apparently well calculated for use:  the root seems to be perennial, and it is probable that the cutting of the stems may not at all injure it, for although the seeds are not yet ripe, there are young suckers shooting up from the root, whence we may infer that the stems which are fully grown and in the proper stage of vegetation to produce the best flax, are not essential to the preservation or support of the root, a circumstance which would render it a most valuable plant.  To-day we have met with a second species of flax smaller than the first, as it seldom obtains a greater height than nine or twelve inches:  the leaf and stem resemble those of the species just mentioned, except that the latter is rarely branched, and bears a single monopetalous bell-shaped blue flower, suspended with its limb downwards.  We saw several herds of the big-horn, but they were in the cliffs beyond our reach.  We killed an elk this morning and found part of a deer which had been left for us by captain Clarke.  He pursued his route,

Friday, 19, early in the morning, and soon passed the remains of several Indian camps formed of willow brush, which seemed to have been deserted this spring.  At the same time he observed that the pine trees had been stripped of their bark about the same season, which our Indian woman say her countrymen do in order to obtain the sap and the soft parts of the wood and bark for food.  About eleven o’clock he met a herd of elk and killed two of them, but such was the want of wood in the neighbourhood that he was unable to procure enough to make a fire, and he was therefore obliged to substitute the dung of the buffaloe, with which he cooked his breakfast.  They then