rgrowth like that of the low grounds, with the addition of
the broad-leafed willow, gooseberry, chokecherry, purple currant, and
honeysuckle; or they are between the low grounds and the hills, and for
the most part without wood or any thing except large quantities of wild
hysop; this plant rises about two feet high, and like the willow of the
sandbars is a favourite food of the buffaloe, elk, deer, grouse,
porcupine, hare, and rabbit. This river which had been known to the
French as the Roche jaune, or as we have called it the Yellowstone,
rises according to Indian information in the Rocky mountains; its
sources are near those of the Missouri and the Platte, and it may be
navigated in canoes almost to its head. It runs first through a
mountainous country, but in many parts fertile and well timbered; it
then waters a rich delightful land, broken into vallies and meadows, and
well supplied with wood and water till it reaches near the Missouri open
meadows and low grounds, sufficiently timbered on its borders. In the
upper country its course is represented as very rapid, but during the
two last and largest portions, its current is much more gentle than that
of the Missouri, which it resembles also in being turbid though with
less sediment. The man who was sent up the river, reported in the
evening that he had gone about eight miles, that during that distance
the river winds on both sides of a plain four or five miles wide, that
the current was gentle and much obstructed by sandbars, that at five
miles he had met with a large timbered island, three miles beyond which
a creek falls in on the S.E. above a high bluff, in which are several
strata of coal. The country as far as he could discern, resembled that
of the Missouri, and in the plain he met several of the bighorn animals,
but they were too shy to be obtained. The bed of the Yellowstone, as we
observed it near the mouth, is composed of sand and mud, without a stone
of any kind. Just above the confluence we measured the two rivers, and
found the bed of the Missouri five hundred and twenty yards wide, the
water occupying only three hundred and thirty, and the channel deep:
while the Yellowstone, including its sandbar, occupied eight hundred and
fifty-eight yards, with two hundred and ninety-seven yards of water: the
deepest part of the channel is twelve feet, but the river is now falling
and seems to be nearly at its summer height.

April 27. We left the mouth of the Yello