called the Cote Noire or Black
hills. The country thus denominated consists of high broken irregular
hills and short chains of mountains; sometimes one hundred and twenty
miles in width, sometimes narrower, but always much higher than the
country on either side. They commence about the head of the Kanzas,
where they diverge; the first ridge going westward, along the northern
shore of the Arkansaw; the second approaches the Rock mountains
obliquely in a course a little to the W. of N.W. and after passing the
Platte above its forks, and intersecting the Yellowstone near the
Bigbend, crosses the Missouri at this place, and probably swell the
country as far as the Saskashawan, though as they are represented much
smaller here than to the south, they may not reach that river.

Saturday, 25th. Two canoes which were left behind yesterday to bring on
the game, did not join us till eight o'clock this morning, when we set
out with the towline, the use of which the banks permitted. The wind
was, however, ahead, the current strong, particularly round the points
against which it happened to set, and the gullies from the hills having
brought down quantities of stone, those projected into the river,
forming barriers for forty or fifty feet round, which it was very
difficult to pass. At the distance of two and three quarter miles we
passed a small island in a deep bend on the south, and on the same side
a creek twenty yards wide, but with no running water. About a mile
further is an island between two and three miles in length, separated
from the northern shore by a narrow channel, in which is a sand island
at the distance of half a mile from its lower extremity. To this large
island we gave the name of Teapot island; two miles above which is an
island a mile long, and situated on the south. At three and a half miles
is another small island, and one mile beyond it a second three quarters
of a mile in length, on the north side. In the middle of the river two
miles above this is an island with no timber, and of the same extent as
this last. The country on each side is high, broken, and rocky; the rock
being either a soft brown sandstone, covered with a thin stratum of
limestone, or else a hard black rugged granite, both usually in
horizontal stratas, and the sandrock overlaying the other. Salts and
quartz as well as some coal and pumicestone still appear: the bars of
the river are composed principally of gravel; the river low grounds are