from seeing several white brants among flocks of dark-coloured ones.  At the distance of twenty miles we came to on a sandbar towards the north side of the river, with a willow island opposite; the hills or bluffs come to the banks of the river on both sides, but are not so high as they are below:  the river itself however continues of the same width, and the sandbars are quite as numerous.  The soil of the banks is dark coloured, and many of the bluffs have the appearance of being on fire.  Our game this day was a deer, a prairie wolf, and some goats out of a flock that was swimming across the river.

Saturday, October 6.  The morning was still cold, the wind being from the north.  At eight miles we came to a willow island on the north, opposite a point of timber, where there are many large stones near the middle of the river, which seem to have been washed from the hills and high plains on both sides, or driven from a distance down the stream.  At twelve miles we halted for dinner at a village which we suppose to have belonged to the Ricaras; it is situated in a low plain on the river, and consists of about eighty lodges, of an octagon form, neatly covered with earth, placed as close to each other as possible, and picketed round.  The skin canoes, mats, buckets, and articles of furniture found in the lodges, induce us to suppose that it had been left in the spring.  We found three different sorts of squashes growing in the village; we also killed an elk near it, and saw two wolves.  On leaving the village the river became shallow, and after searching a long time for the main channel, which was concealed among sandbars, we at last dragged the boat over one of them rather than go back three miles for the deepest channel.  At fourteen and a half miles we stopped for the night on a sandbar, opposite a creek on the north, called Otter creek, twenty-two yards in width, and containing more water than is common for creeks of that size.  The sides of the river during the day are variegated with high bluffs and low timbered grounds on the banks:  the river is very much obstructed by sandbars.  We saw geese, swan, brants and ducks of different kinds on the sandbars, and on shore numbers of the prairie hen; the magpie too is very common, but the gulls and plover, which we saw in such numbers below, are now quite rare.

Sunday, October 7.  There was frost again last evening, and this morning was cloudy and attended with rain.  At two miles we came to the mouth of a river; called by the Ricaras, Sawawkawna, or Pork river; the party who examined it for about three miles up, say that its current is gentle, and that it does not seem to throw out much sand.  Its sources are in the first range of the Black mountains, and though it has now only water of twenty yards width, yet when full it occupies ninety.  Just below the mouth is another village or wintering camp of the Ricaras, composed of about sixty lodges, built in the same form as those passed yesterday, with willow and straw