THE MISSOURI RIVER JOURNALS S05 



day. We began seeing Buffaloes again in small gangs, 

 but this afternoon and evening we have seen a goodly 

 number, probably more than a hundred. We also saw 

 fifteen or twenty Antelopes. I saw ten at once, and it 

 was beautiful to see them running from the top of a high 

 hill down to its base, after which they went round the 

 same hill, and were lost to us. We have landed three 

 times to cut wood, and are now busy at it on Cedar 

 Island.^ At both the previous islands we saw an im- 

 mense number of Buffalo tracks, more, indeed, than I 

 had anticipated. The whole of the prairies as well as 

 the hills have been so trampled by them that I should 

 have considered it quite unsafe for a man to travel on 

 horseback. The ground was literally covered with their 

 tracks, and also with bunches of hair, while the bushes 

 and the trunks of the trees, between which they had 

 passed, were hanging with the latter substance. I col- 

 lected some, and intend to carry a good deal home. We 

 found here an abundance of what is called the White Ap- 

 ple, ^ but which is anything else but an apple. The fruit 

 grows under the ground about six inches ; it is about the 

 size of a hen's egg, covered with a woody, hard pellicle, a 

 sixteenth of an inch thick, from which the fruit can be 



1 " ' Cedar ' is the name which has been applied by various authors to 

 several different islands, many miles apart, in this portion of the river. . . . 

 We reached an island extending for two miles in the middle of the river, 

 covered with red cedar, from which it derives its name of Cedar Island." 

 ("Lewis and Clark," ed. of 1893.) 



" Cedar Island is said to be 1075 miles from the mouth of the Missouri. 

 On the steep banks of this long, narrow island which lies near the south- 

 west bank, there were thickets of poplars, willows, and buffalo-berry; the 

 rest of the island is covered with a dark forest of red cedars, of which we 

 immediately felled a goodly number. The notes of numerous birds were 

 heard in the gloom of the cedar forest, into which no ray of sun could pen- 

 etrate. Here, too, we found everywhere traces of the elks and stags, and 

 saw where they had rubbed off the bark with their antlers." (" Travels in 

 North America," Maximilian, Prince of Wied, p. 144.) 



2 Translating the usual French name (pomme blanche) of the Psoralea 

 esculenta. 



