Monday 5.  The Indians are all out on their hunting parties:  a camp of Mandans caught within two days one hundred goats a short distance below us:  their mode of hunting them is to form a large strong pen or fold, from which a fence made of bushes gradually widens on each side:  the animals are surrounded by the hunters and gently driven towards this pen, in which they imperceptibly find themselves inclosed and are then at the mercy of the hunters.  The weather is cloudy and the wind moderate from the northwest.  Late at night we were awaked by the sergeant on guard to see the beautiful phenomenon called the northern light:  along the northern sky was a large space occupied by a light of a pale but brilliant white colour:  which rising from the horizon extended itself to nearly twenty degrees above it.  After glittering for some time its colours would be overcast, and almost obscured, but again it would burst out with renewed beauty; the uniform colour was pale light, but its shapes were various and fantastic:  at times the sky was lined with light coloured streaks rising perpendicularly from the horizon, and gradually expanding into a body of light in which we could trace the floating columns sometimes advancing, sometimes retreating and shaping into infinite forms, the space in which they moved.  It all faded away before the morning.  At daylight,

Tuesday 6, the clouds to the north were darkening and the wind rose high from the northwest at eight o’clock, and continued cold during the day.  Mr. Gravelines and four others who came with us returned to the Ricaras in a small periogue, we gave him directions to accompany some of the Ricara chiefs to the seat of government in the spring.

Wednesday 7.  The day was temperate but cloudy and foggy, and we were enabled to go on with our work with much expedition.

Thursday 8.  The morning again cloudy; our huts advance very well, and we are visited by numbers of Indians who come to let their horses graze near us:  in the day the horses are let loose in quest of grass, in the night they are collected and receive an armful of small boughs of the cottonwood, which being very juicy, soft and brittle, form nutritious and agreeable food:  the frost this morning was very severe, the weather during the day cloudy and the wind from the northwest.  We procured from an Indian a weasel perfectly white except the extremity of the tail which was black:  great numbers of wild geese are passing to the south, but their flight is too high for us to procure any of them.

November 10.  We had again a raw day, a northwest wind, but rose early in hopes of finishing our works before the extreme cold begins.  A chief who is a half Pawnee came to us and brought a present of half a buffaloe, in return for which we gave him some small presents and a few articles to his wife and son:  he then crossed the river in a buffaloe skin canoe; his wife took the boat on her back and carried it to the village three miles off.  Large flocks of geese and brant, and also a few ducks are passing towards the south.