LAKE MANDAN HSI 
One night I was awakened bya horrible noise. A 
- mountain lion, like myself, finding himself surrounded 
by rising water, uttered blood curdling sounds, on the 
still midnight air. My camp between the lake and river 
was a dangerous place in time of flood. In anticipation 
of this I had taken the precaution to have a bull boat 
and piling my effects and belongings in this big tub 
made out for higher ground. 
Although in a day or two the air turned cold and the 
water receded I never returned to that cabin among the 
sand hills. My two ponies were already feeding out on 
the high prairie. Early one morning while attending 
some traps, Icame acrossa band of seven deer and 
killed them all. This was not a difficult thing to do 
‘in these days of the improved breech loader. Hunting 
up the Indians I gave them the meat, reserving the hides 
only. Soon after I saddled up the ponies and moved to 
the Burnt Woods,—seven miles below. 
While there in camp, I awoke one morning shook the 
snow from my blankets, and saw all around me asea of 
ice. The Yellowstone River had broken its icy fetters, 
and throwing the floes under the ice of the unthawed 
Missouri, had formed a gorge. It was prodigous up- 
heavel of masses of broken ice, spreading out for miles 
on either side of the river’s natural bed, and bearing 
down andcrushing mighty forests of cottonwoods, as if 
they were but reeds in a mill pond. 
A cold wave followed, but the river kept on raising 
higher and extending its banks. About midnight after 
a gradual raise of forty eight hours, I could hear the. 
neighs and dying bellows and moans, of the freezing 
and drowing horses and cattle, the property of Ranch- 
