It Abounds In The Regions West
Of Salt Lake Valley, Whitening Vast Areas Like Snow And Poisoning
The Waters So
That the traveller often sees the margins
of the brown pools lined with skeletons and bodies of small
animals whose
Thirst had led them to drink the deadly fluid.
Men and animals stiffer from smaller doses of this stuff,
which is largely a sulphate of soda, and even in small quantities
is harmful to the system.
Here, on the twelfth of April, they were able to determine the exact course
of the Little Missouri, a stream about which almost nothing was then known.
Near here, too, they found the source of the Mouse River, only a few
miles from the Missouri. The river, bending to the north and then making
many eccentric curves, finally empties into Lake Winnipeg, and so passes
into the great chain of northern lakes in British America. At this
point the explorers saw great flocks of the wild Canada goose.
The journal says: -
"These geese, we observe, do not build their nests on the ground
or in the sand-bars, but in the tops of the lofty cottonwood trees.
We saw some elk and buffalo to-day, but at too great a distance
to obtain any of them, though a number of the carcasses of
the latter animal are strewed along the shore, having fallen
through the ice and been swept along when the river broke up.
More bald eagles are seen on this part of the Missouri than
we have previously met with; the small sparrow-hawk, common
in most parts of the United States, is also found here.
Great quantities of geese are feeding on the prairies,
and one flock of white brant, or geese with black-tipped wings,
and some gray brant with them, pass up the river; from their
flight they seem to proceed much further to the northwest.
We killed two antelopes, which were very lean, and caught
last night two beavers."
Lewis and Clark were laughed at by some very knowing people
who scouted the idea that wild geese build their nests in trees.
But later travellers have confirmed their story;
the wise geese avoid foxes and other of their four-footed
enemies by fixing their homes in the tall cottonwoods.
In other words, they roost high.
The Assiniboins from the north had lately been on
their spring hunting expeditions through this region, -
just above the Little Missouri, - and game was scarce and shy.
The journal, under the date of April 14, says: -
"One of the hunters shot at an otter last evening; a buffalo was killed,
and an elk, both so poor as to be almost unfit for use; two white [grizzly]
bears were also seen, and a muskrat swimming across the river. The river
continues wide and of about the same rapidity as the ordinary current
of the Ohio. The low grounds are wide, the moister parts containing timber;
the upland is extremely broken, without wood, and in some places seems
as if it had slipped down in masses of several acres in surface.
The mineral appearance of salts, coal, and sulphur, with the burnt hill
and pumice-stone, continue, and a bituminous water about the color of
strong lye, with the taste of Glauber's salts and a slight tincture of alum.
Many geese were feeding in the prairies, and a number of magpies,
which build their nests much like those of the blackbird, in trees,
and composed of small sticks, leaves, and grass, open at the top;
the egg is of a bluish-brown color, freckled with reddish-brown spots.
We also killed a large hooting-owl resembling that of the United States
except that it was more booted and clad with feathers.
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