Indian Life. 423 



Many pages of the Journal describe the daily inci 

 dents of the next few weeks, in which the party were slow 

 ly pushing their way up the river, and making occasional 

 excursions from the boat in pursuit of the objects of their 

 journey. The country was inundated in many places, 

 and from the tops of the neighboring hills it is repre- 

 sented as about equally divided between land and water ; 

 on the eastern side of the river the flat prairies had be- 

 come great lakes. And they noticed that the floating ice 

 had cut the trees on the banks of the river as high as 

 the shoulder of a man. Barges from above passed them, 

 bringing down the spoils of the hunters, and one from St. 

 Pierre had ten thousand buffalo-robes on board. The 

 men reported that the country above was filled with buf- 

 faloes, and the shores of the river were covered with 

 the dead bodies of old and young ones. 



As they ascended they found the river more shallow 

 in some parts, and again opening into broad places like 

 great lagoons. They passed Vermillion River, a small 

 stream running out of muddy banks filled with willows. 

 At a landing near there, a man told them that a hunter had 

 recently killed an Indian chief near the foot of the Rocky 

 Mountains, and that it would be dangerous for white men 

 to visit that region. 



They also found on the river's bank the plant called 

 the white apple, much used by the Indians for food, 

 which they dry, pound, and make into mash. It is more 

 of a potato than apple, for it grows six inches under 

 ground, is about the size of a hen's egg, covered with a 

 dark-brown woody hard skin the sixteenth of an inch 

 thick : the fruit is easily drawn from the skin, and is of a 

 whitish color. It has no flowers, the roots were woody, 

 leaves ovate and attached in fives. When dry, the apple 

 is hard as wood, and has to be pounded for use. 



The country grew poorer the farther they ascended 



