The observation of to-day gave 46 degrees 48’ 28” as the latitude of Travellers-rest creek.

Wednesday 11.  Two of our horses having strayed away we were detained all the morning before they were caught.  In the meantime our Tushepaw Indian became impatient of the delay, and set out to return home alone.  As usual we had dispatched four of our best hunters ahead, and as we hoped with their aid and our present stock of provisions to subsist on the route, we proceeded at three o’clock up the right side of the creek, and encamped under some old Indian huts at the distance of seven miles.  The road was plain and good; the valley is however narrower than that which we left and bordered by high and rugged hills to the right, while the mountains on the left were covered with snow.  The day was fair and warm, the wind from the northwest.

Thursday 12.  There was a white frost this morning.  We proceeded at seven o’clock and soon passed a stream falling in on the right, near which was an old Indian camp with a bath or sweating-house covered with earth.  At two miles distance we ascended a high, and thence continued through a hilly and thickly timbered country for nine miles, when we came to the forks of the creek, where the road branches up each fork.  We followed the western route, and finding that the creek made a considerable bend at the distance of four miles, crossed a high mountain in order to avoid the circuit.  The road had been very bad during the first part of the day, but the passage of the mountain, which was eight miles across, was very painful to the horses, as we were obliged to go over steep stony sides of hills and along the hollows and ravines, rendered more disagreeable* by the fallen timber, chiefly pine, spruce pine and fir.  We at length reached the creek, having made twenty-three miles of a route so difficult that some of the party did not join us before ten o’clock.  We found the account of the scantiness of game but too true, as we were not able to procure any thing during the whole of yesterday, and to-day we killed only a single pheasant.  Along the road we observed many of the pine trees pealed off, which is done by the Indians to procure the inner bark for food in the spring.

Friday 13.  Two of the horses strayed away during the night, and one of them being captain Lewis’s, he remained with four men to search for them while we proceeded up the creek:  at the distance of two miles we came to several springs issuing from large rocks of a coarse hard grit, and nearly boiling hot.  Those seem to be much frequented as there are several paths made by elk, deer and other animals, and near one of the springs a hole or Indian bath, and roads leading in different directions.  These embarrassed our guide, who mistaking the road took us three miles out of the proper course over an exceedingly bad route.  We then fell into the right road, and proceeded on very well, when having made five miles we stopped to refresh the horses.  Captain