We proceeded soon after sunrise:  the first five miles we passed four bends on the left, and several bayous on both sides.  At eight o’clock we stopped to breakfast, and found the note captain Lewis had written on the 2d instant.  During the next four miles, we passed three small bends of the river to the right, two small islands, and two bayous on the same side.  Here we reached a bluff on the left; our next course was six miles to our encampment.  In this course we met six circular bends on the right, and several small bayous, and halted for the night in a low ground of cottonwood on the right.  Our days journey, though only fifteen miles in length, was very fatiguing.  The river is still rapid and the water though clear is very much obstructed by shoals or ripples at every two or three hundred yards:  at all these places we are obliged to drag the canoes over the stones as there is not a sufficient depth of water to float them, and in the other parts the current obliges us to have recourse to the cord.  But as the brushwood on the banks will not permit us to walk on shore, we are under the necessity of wading through the river as we drag the boats.  This soon makes our feet tender, and sometimes occasions severe falls over the slippery stones; and the men by being constantly wet are becoming more feeble.  In the course of the day the hunters killed two deer, some geese and ducks, and the party saw antelopes, cranes, beaver and otter.

Monday 5.  This morning Chaboneau complained of being unable to march far to-day, and captain Lewis therefore ordered him and serjeant Gass to pass the rapid river and proceed through the level low ground, to a point of high timber on the middle fork, seven miles distant, and wait his return.  He then went along the north side of the rapid river about four miles, where he waded it, and found it so rapid and shallow that it would be impossible to navigate it.  He continued along the left side for a mile and a half, when the mountains came close on the river, and rise to a considerable height with a partial covering of snow.  From this place the course of the river was to the east of north.  After ascending with some difficulty a high point of the mountain, he had a pleasing view of the valley he had passed, and which continued for about twenty miles further on each side of the middle fork, which then seemed to enter the mountains, and was lost to the view.  In that direction, however, the hills which terminate the valley are much lower than those along either of the other forks, particularly the rapid one, where they continue rising in ranges above each other us far as the eye could reach.  The general course too of the middle fork, as well as that of the gap which it forms on entering the mountains, is considerably to the south of west; circumstances which gave a decided preference to this branch as our future route.  Captain Lewis now descended the mountain, and crossed over to the middle fork, about five miles distant, and found it still