The Banks Of The Rivers
And Sand-Bars Were Covered With "A White Substance, Which Appears
In Considerable Quantities On
The surface of the earth,
and tastes like a mixture of common salt with Glauber's salts."
"Many of the streams,
" The journal adds, "are so strongly
impregnated with this substance that the water has an
unpleasant taste and a purgative effect." This is nothing
more than the so-called alkali which has since become known
all over the farthest West. It abounds in the regions west
of Salt Lake Valley, whitening vast areas like snow and poisoning
the waters so that the traveller often sees the margins
of the brown pools lined with skeletons and bodies of small
animals whose thirst had led them to drink the deadly fluid.
Men and animals stiffer from smaller doses of this stuff,
which is largely a sulphate of soda, and even in small quantities
is harmful to the system.
Here, on the twelfth of April, they were able to determine the exact course
of the Little Missouri, a stream about which almost nothing was then known.
Near here, too, they found the source of the Mouse River, only a few
miles from the Missouri. The river, bending to the north and then making
many eccentric curves, finally empties into Lake Winnipeg, and so passes
into the great chain of northern lakes in British America. At this
point the explorers saw great flocks of the wild Canada goose.
The journal says: -
"These geese, we observe, do not build their nests on the ground
or in the sand-bars, but in the tops of the lofty cottonwood trees.
We saw some elk and buffalo to-day, but at too great a distance
to obtain any of them, though a number of the carcasses of
the latter animal are strewed along the shore, having fallen
through the ice and been swept along when the river broke up.
More bald eagles are seen on this part of the Missouri than
we have previously met with; the small sparrow-hawk, common
in most parts of the United States, is also found here.
Great quantities of geese are feeding on the prairies,
and one flock of white brant, or geese with black-tipped wings,
and some gray brant with them, pass up the river; from their
flight they seem to proceed much further to the northwest.
We killed two antelopes, which were very lean, and caught
last night two beavers."
Lewis and Clark were laughed at by some very knowing people
who scouted the idea that wild geese build their nests in trees.
But later travellers have confirmed their story;
the wise geese avoid foxes and other of their four-footed
enemies by fixing their homes in the tall cottonwoods.
In other words, they roost high.
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