306 ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPEDITION. 



Among the birds noticed during this monotonous journey 

 were turkey buzzards, ravens, barking crows and black 

 terns ; on the borders of several shallow ponds or marshes, 

 which are often dry in the autumn, ducks were plentiful, 

 and afforded us a grateful supply of fresh food. We saw 

 some herds of cabri, and McKay succeeded in killing a 

 female after a long chase. The grasshoppers were very 

 numerous, and during four days filled the air like flakes of 

 snow ; they rose simultaneously when about to take their 

 flight, from areas of two to twenty acres in extent, first per- 

 pendicularly to the height of twelve or fourteen feet, then 

 in a slanting direction, until they had attained an elevation 

 of from two to three hundred feet, after which they pur- 

 sued a horizontal course before the wind. In a light 

 breeze, the noise produced by their wings was like a 

 gentle wind stirring the leaves of a forest. 



Our half-breeds informed us that this great prairie west 

 of the Souris continues treeless and arid for a distance of 

 sixty miles, it is then crossed by a river, probably the Moose 

 Mountain Creek, shown on Capt. Palliser's map ; beyond 

 this river the prairie continues for eighty miles further with- 

 out tree or shrub ; and as this was the utmost westerly 

 limit to which any of them had journeyed in their buffalo- 

 hunting expeditions, they could afford us no further 

 information respecting its extent. They were most of 

 them familiar with the country south of the Great Prairie, 

 the Grand Coteau de Missouri, where the buffalo range 

 during the summer in vast herds. 



On the 6th July we arrived at Pipestone Creek, and 

 found the country swarming with a young brood of grass- 

 hoppers, with wings about a quarter of an inch long, 

 showing that their progenitors had arrived in the pre- 

 ceding autumn in time to deposit their eggs in the soil. 

 Innumerable hosts of these insects passed overhead during 



