Monday 26.  The morning was excessively cold, and the ice in our vessels was nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness:  we set out at sunrise, and soon reached the fountain of the Missouri, where we halted for a few minutes, and then crossing the dividing ridge reached the fine spring where captain Lewis had slept on the 12th in his first excursion to the Shoshonee camp.  The grass on the hill sides is perfectly dry and parched by the sun, but near the spring was a fine green grass:  we therefore halted for dinner and turned our horses to graze.  To each of the Indians who were engaged in carrying our baggage was distributed a pint of corn, which they parched, then pounded, and made a sort of soup.  One of the women who had been leading two of our pack horses halted at a rivulet about a mile behind, and sent on the two horses by a female friend:  on inquiring of Cameahwait the cause of her detention, he answered with great appearance of unconcern, that she had just stopped to lie in, but would soon overtake us.  In fact we were astonished to see her in about an hour’s time come on with her new born infant and pass us on her way to the camp, apparently in perfect health.

This wonderful facility with which the Indian women bring forth their children, seems rather some benevolent gift of nature, in exempting them from pains which their savage state would render doubly grievous, than any result of habit.  If as has been imagined, a pure dry air or a cold and elevated country are obstacles to easy delivery, every difficulty incident to that operation might be expected in this part of the continent; nor can another reason, the habit of carrying heavy burthens during pregnancy, be at all applicable to the Shoshonee women, who rarely carry any burdens, since their nation possesses an abundance of horses.  We have indeed been several times informed by those conversant with Indian manners, and who asserted their knowledge of the fact, that Indian women pregnant by white men experience more difficulty in child-birth than when the father is an Indian.  If this account be true, it may contribute to strengthen the belief, that the easy delivery of the Indian women is wholly constitutional.

The tops of the high irregular mountains to the westward are still entirely covered with snow; and the coolness which the air acquires in passing them, is a very agreeable relief from the heat, which has dried up the herbage on the sides of the hills.  While we stopped, the women were busily employed in collecting the root of a plant with which they feed their children, who like their mothers are nearly half starved and in a wretched condition.  It is a species of fennel which grows in the moist grounds; the radix is of the knob kind, of a long ovate form, terminating in a single radicle, the whole being three or four inches long, and the thickest part about the size of a man’s little finger:  when fresh, it is white, firm, and crisp; and when dried and pounded makes a fine