hree
hundred and forty and a quarter yards wide, though it is wider a short
distance above the mouth. The Missouri itself is about five hundred
yards in width; the point of union is low and subject to inundations for
two hundred and fifty yards, it then rises a little above high water
mark, and continues so as far back as the hills. On the south of the
Kanzas the hills or highlands come within one mile and a half of the
river; on the north of the Missouri they do not approach nearer than
several miles; but on all sides the country is fine. The comparative
specific gravities of the two rivers is, for the Missouri seventy-eight,
the Kanzas seventy-two degrees; the waters of the latter have a very
disagreeable taste, the former has risen during yesterday and to day
about two feet. On the banks of the Kanzas reside the Indians of the
same name, consisting of two villages, one at about twenty, the other
forty leagues from its mouth, and amounting to about three hundred men.
They once lived twenty-four leagues higher than the Kanzas, on the south
bank of the Missouri, and were then more numerous, but they have been
reduced and banished by the Sauks and Ayauways, who being better
supplied with arms have an advantage over the Kanzas, though the latter
are not less fierce or warlike than themselves. This nation is now
hunting in the plains for the buffaloe which our hunters have seen for
the first time.

[Footnote A: A few miles up the Blue Water Creek are quarries of plaster
of paris, since worked and brought down to St. Louis.]

On the 29th, we set out late in the afternoon, and having passed a
sandbar, near which the boat was almost lost, and a large island on the
north, we encamped at seven and a quarter miles on the same side in the
low lands, where the rushes are so thick that it is troublesome to walk
through them. Early the next morning, 30th, we reached, at five miles
distance, the mouth of a river coming in from the north, and called by
the French, Petite Riviere Platte, or Little Shallow river; it is about
sixty yards wide at its mouth. A few of the party who ascended informed
us, that the lands on both sides are good, and that there are several
falls well calculated for mills; the wind was from the south west, and
the weather oppressively warm, the thermometer standing at 96 degrees
above at three o'clock P.M. One mile beyond this is a small creek on the
south, at five miles from which we encamped on the same side,