r-course
Poplar River; at the mouth of the river, in Montana, is now the Poplar
River Indian Agency and military post. The waters of this stream, the
explorers found, were clear and transparent,--an exception to all the
streams, which, discharging into the Missouri, give it its name of the
Big Muddy. The journal adds:--

"A quarter of a mile beyond this river a creek falls in on the south,
to which, on account of its distance from the mouth of the Missouri, we
gave the name of Two-thousand-mile creek. It is a bold stream with a bed
thirty yards wide. At three and one-half miles above Porcupine River,
we reached some high timber on the north, and camped just above an
old channel of the river, which is now dry. We saw vast quantities of
buffalo, elk, deer,--principally of the long-tailed kind,--antelope,
beaver, geese, ducks, brant, and some swan. The porcupines too are
numerous, and so careless and clumsy that we can approach very near
without disturbing them, as they are feeding on the young willows.
Toward evening we also found for the first time the nest of a goose
among some driftwood, all that we had hitherto seen being on the top of
a broken tree on the forks, invariably from fifteen to twenty or more
feet in height."

"Next day," May 4, says the journal, "we passed some old Indian
hunting-camps, one of which consisted of two large lodges, fortified
with a circular fence twenty or thirty feet in diameter, made of timber
laid horizontally, the beams overlying each other to the height of five
feet, and covered with the trunks and limbs of trees that have drifted
down the river. The lodges themselves are formed by three or more strong
sticks about the size of a man's leg or arm and twelve feet long, which
are attached at the top by a withe of small willows, and spread out so
as to form at the base a circle of ten to fourteen feet in diameter.
Against these are placed pieces of driftwood and fallen timber, usually
in three ranges, one on the other; the interstices are covered with
leaves, bark, and straw, so as to form a conical figure about ten feet
high, with a small aperture in one side for the door. It is, however, at
best a very imperfect shelter against the inclemencies of the seasons."

Wolves were very abundant along the route of the explorers, the
most numerous species being the common kind, now known as the coyote
(pronounced kyote), and named by science the canis latrans. These
animals are cowardly and sl