The elevation of these highlands varies as they pass through this extensive tract of country.  From Wood river they are about one hundred and fifty feet above the water, and continue at that height till they rise near the Osage, from which place to the ancient fortification they again diminish in size.  Thence they continue higher till the Mandan village, after which they are rather lower till the neighbourhood of Muscleshell river, where they are met by the Northern hills, which have advanced at a more uniform height, varying from one hundred and fifty to two hundred or three hundred feet.  From this place to the mountains the height of both is nearly the same, from three hundred to five hundred feet, and the low grounds so narrow that the traveller seems passing through a range of high country.  From Maria’s river to the falls, the hills descend to the height of about two or three hundred feet.

Monday 19.  The morning was cold, and the grass perfectly whitened by the frost.  We were engaged in preparing packs and saddles to load the horses as soon as they should arrive.  A beaver was caught in a trap, but we were disappointed in trying to catch trout in our net; we therefore made a seine of willow brush, and by hauling it procured a number of fine trout, and a species of mullet which we had not seen before:  it is about sixteen inches long, the scales small; the nose long, obtusely pointed, and exceeding the under jaw; the mouth opens with folds at the sides; it has no teeth, and the tongue and palate is smooth.  The colour of its back and sides is a bluish brown, while the belly is white:  it has the faggot bones, whence we concluded it to be of the mullet species.  It is by no means so well flavoured a fish as the trout, which are the same as those we first saw at the falls, larger than the speckled trout of the mountains in the Atlantic states, and equally well flavoured.  In the evening the hunters returned with two deer.

Captain Clarke, in the meantime, proceeded through a wide level valley, in which the chief pointed out a spot where many of his tribe were killed in battle a year ago.  The Indians accompanied him during the day, and as they had nothing to eat, he was obliged to feed them from his own stores, the hunters not being able to kill any thing.  Just as he was entering the mountains, he met an Indian with two mules and a Spanish saddle, who was so polite as to offer one of them to him to ride over the hills.  Being on foot, captain Clarke accepted his offer and gave him a waistcoat as a reward for his civility.  He encamped for the night on a small stream, and the next morning,