hrough this region,--just above the Little Missouri,--and
game was scarce and shy. The journal, under the date of April 14,
says:--

"One of the hunters shot at an otter last evening; a buffalo was killed,
and an elk, both so poor as to be almost unfit for use; two white
(grizzly) bears were also seen, and a muskrat swimming across the river.
The river continues wide and of about the same rapidity as the ordinary
current of the Ohio. The low grounds are wide, the moister parts
containing timber; the upland is extremely broken, without wood, and in
some places seems as if it had slipped down in masses of several acres
in surface. The mineral appearance of salts, coal, and sulphur, with the
burnt hill and pumice-stone, continue, and a bituminous water about
the color of strong lye, with the taste of Glauber's salts and a slight
tincture of alum. Many geese were feeding in the prairies, and a number
of magpies, which build their nests much like those of the blackbird, in
trees, and composed of small sticks, leaves, and grass, open at the top;
the egg is of a bluish-brown color, freckled with reddish-brown spots.
We also killed a large hooting-owl resembling that of the United States
except that it was more booted and clad with feathers. On the hills
are many aromatic herbs, resembling in taste, smell, and appearance the
sage, hyssop, wormwood, southernwood, juniper, and dwarf cedar; a plant
also about two or three feet high, similar to the camphor in smell and
taste; and another plant of the same size, with a long, narrow, smooth,
soft leaf, of an agreeable smell and flavor, which is a favorite food of
the antelope, whose necks are often perfumed by rubbing against it."

What the journalist intended to say here was that at least one of the
aromatic herbs resembled sage, hyssop, wormwood, and southernwood, and
that there were junipers and dwarf cedars. The pungent-smelling herb was
the wild sage, now celebrated in stories of adventure as the sage-brush.
It grows abundantly in the alkali country, and is browsed upon by a
species of grouse known as the sage-hen. Junipers and dwarf cedars also
grow on the hills of the alkali and sage-brush country. The sage belongs
to the Artemisia family of plants.

Four days later, the journal had this interesting entry:

"The country to-day presented the usual variety of highlands
interspersed with rich plains. In one of these we observed a species of
pea bearing a yellow flower, which i