situated
at the mouth of the Big Knife. The passage of the party up the river was
slow, owing to unfavorable winds; and they observed along the banks
many signs of early convulsions of nature. The earth of the bluffs was
streaked with layers of coal, or carbonized wood, and large quantities
of lava and pumice-stone were strewn around, showing traces of ancient
volcanic action. The journal of April 9 says:--

"A great number of brants (snow-geese) pass up the river; some of them
are perfectly white, except the large feathers of the first joint of
the wing, which are black, though in every other characteristic they
resemble common gray brant. We also saw but could not procure an animal
(gopher) that burrows in the ground, and is similar in every respect to
the burrowing-squirrel, except that it is only one-third of its size.
This may be the animal whose works we have often seen in the plains and
prairies; they resemble the labors of the salamander in the sand-hills
of South Carolina and Georgia, and like him the animals rarely come
above ground; they consist of a little hillock of ten or twelve pounds
of loose ground, which would seem to have been reversed from a pot,
though no aperture is seen through which it could have been thrown. On
removing gently the earth, you discover that the soil has been broken
in a circle of about an inch and a half diameter, where the ground is
looser, though still no opening is perceptible. When we stopped for
dinner the squaw (Sacajawea) went out, and after penetrating with a
sharp stick the holes of the mice (gophers), near some drift-wood,
brought to us a quantity of wild artichokes, which the mice collect and
hoard in large numbers. The root is white, of an ovate form, from one to
three inches long, and generally of the size of a man's finger, and two,
four, and sometimes six roots are attached to a single stalk. Its
flavor as well as the stalk which issues from it resemble those of the
Jerusalem artichoke, except that the latter is much larger."

The weather rapidly grew so warm, although this was early in April,
that the men worked half-naked during the day; and they were very much
annoyed by clouds of mosquitoes. They found that the hillsides and
even the banks of the rivers and sand-bars were covered with "a white
substance, which appears in considerable quantities on the surface
of the earth, and tastes like a mixture of common salt with Glauber's
salts." "Many of the streams," th