quirrels in the neighborhood....

On the 20th they arrived at the Grand Detour, or Great Bend, and two men
were despatched with the only horse, to hunt, and wait the arrival of
the boats beyond it. After proceeding twenty-seven and a half miles
farther, they encamped on a sand-bar in the river. Captain Clarke
[continues the narrative], who early this morning had crossed the neck
of the bend, joined us in the evening. At the narrowest part the gorge
is composed of high and irregular hills of about one hundred and eighty
or one hundred and ninety feet in elevation; from this descends an
unbroken plain over the whole of the bend, and the country is separated
from it by this ridge. Great numbers of buffalo, elk, and goats are
wandering over these plains, accompanied by grouse and larks. Captain
Clarke saw a hare, also, on the Great Bend.

Of the goats killed to-day, one is a female, differing from the male in
being smaller in size; its horns, too, are smaller and straighter,
having one short prong, and no black about the neck. None of these goats
have any beard, but are delicately formed and very beautiful.

Shortly after midnight the sleepers were startled by the sergeant on
guard crying out that the sand-bar was sinking, and the alarm was given;
for scarcely had they got off with the boats before the bank under which
they had been lying fell in; and by the time the opposite shore was
reached the ground on which they had been encamped sunk also. A man who
was sent to step off the distance across the head of the bend made it
but two thousand yards, while its circuit is thirty miles. On the 22d
they passed a creek and two islands, known by the name of the Three
Sisters, where a beautiful plain extended on both sides of the river.
This is followed by an island on the north, called Cedar Island, about
one mile and a half in length, and the same distance in breadth, and
deriving its name from the quality of its timber. On the south side of
this island is a fort and a large trading-house, built by a Mr. Loisel
in order to trade with the Sioux, the remains of whose camps are in
great numbers about this place. The establishment is sixty or seventy
feet square, built with red cedar, and picketed in with the same
materials.

The next day, in the evening, three boys of the Sioux nation swam across
the river, and informed them that two parties of Sioux were encamped on
the next river, one consisting of eighty and the second of sixt