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AUDUBON 



carcass; but on reaching the spot, nothing was there. A 

 fine large Raven passed at one hundred yards from us, 

 but I did not shoot. Bell found a few small shells, and 

 Harris shot a Yellow-rumped Warbler. We have seen 

 several White Pelicans, Geese, Black-headed Gulls, and 

 Green-backed Swallows, but nothing new. The night is 

 cloudy and intimates more rain. We are fast to a wil. 

 lowed shore, and are preparing lines to try our luck at 

 catching a Catfish or so. I was astonished to find how 

 much stiffened I was this morning, from the exercise I 

 took on horseback yesterday, and think that now it 

 would take me a week, at least, to accustom my body to 

 riding as I was wont to do twenty years ago. The tim- 

 ber is becoming more scarce as we proceed, and I greatly 

 fear that our only opportunities of securing wood will be 

 those afforded us by that drifted on the bars. 



May 12, Friday. The morning was foggy, thick, and 

 calm. We passed the river called the Sioux Pictoiit^i 

 small stream formerly abounding with Beavers, Otters, 

 Muskrats, etc., but now quite destitute of any of these 

 creatures. On going along the banks bordering a long 

 and wide prairie, thick with willows and other small 

 brush-wood, we saw four Black-tailed Deer* immediately 

 on the bank ; they trotted away without appearing to be 

 much alarmed ; after a few hundred yards, the two larg- 

 est, probably males, raised themselves on their hind feet 

 and pawed at each other, after the manner of stallions, 



1 Little Sioux River of present geography, in Harrison Co., Iowa : see 

 " Lewis and Clark," ed. of 1893, P- 69. — E. C. 



" Otherwise known as the Mule Deer, from the great size of the eau, I 

 and the peculiar shape of the tail, which is white with a black tuft at the 

 tip, and suggests that of the Mule. It is a fine large species, next to the 

 Elk or Wapiti in stature, and first became generally known from the expe- 

 dition of Lewis and Clark. It is the Cervus macrotis of Say, figured and 

 described under this name by Aud. and Bach. Quad. N. A. ii., 1851, p. 206, 

 pi. 78, and commonly called by later naturalists Cariacus macrotis. But its 

 first scientific designation is Damelaphus hemionus, given by C. S. Rafinesqui 

 in 1817. — E. C. 



