Rocky Mountains. 219 



flowing with a very gentle current over a gravelly bed, with 

 a breadth of fifty or sixty yards, and an extreme depth of 

 three feet. It has been named Stinking Fork, its western 

 bottom is of very considerable width, well-wooded with the 

 beforementioned description cf trees, in addition to which 

 the hackberry (Celtis) here first appears, together with 

 a crowded undergrowth of pea vines, nettles, and rank 

 weeds, which obstruct the passage of the traveller. The 

 eastern bank, upon which our noonday encampment was es- 

 tablished, was high rocky and precipitous, requiring consi- 

 derable exertion to surmount it. 



Here the organic reliquiae are somewhat more distinct, than 

 those which we examined on the opposite side of this subsi- 

 diary river. They are referrible to those generally extinct 

 genera, that inhabited the great depths of the primeval ocean. 

 Amongst tnem we recognized a smooth species of Anomia, 

 of the length of half an inch, a species of Tereb atula^ an 

 Encrinus, and numerous insulated spines of a Linnsean 

 EchitiusP 



At two o'clock, pursued our journey under an extreme 

 heat of 92 degrees, which was hardly mitigated by the gentle 

 fanning of a slight S. E. breeze. The appearance of the coun- 

 try had now undergone a somewhat abrupt change. Low 

 scrubby oaks, the prevailing trees no longer exclusively res- 

 tricted, as we have hitherto observed them, to the mere mar- 

 gin of a water course, now were seen extending, in little clus- 

 ters or oases, in the low grounds. In the ravines, which are 

 numerous, profound, abrupt, and rocky, we observed the 

 hickory (Caria of NuttalLj, which had not before occured 

 since our departure from the forests of the Missouri. 



The bluffs are steep and stony, rendering the journey much 

 more laborious to our horses, that were almost exhausted by 

 traversing a plain country, and their hoofs already very 

 much worn by con-jtant friction with the grass, will, we fear, 

 be splmtered and broken, by the numerous loose and angular 



