The Assiniboins From The North Had Lately Been On
Their Spring Hunting Expeditions Through This Region, -
Just Above The Little Missouri, - And Game Was Scarce And Shy.
The Journal, Under The Date Of April 14, Says:
-
"One of the hunters shot at an otter last evening; a buffalo was killed,
and an elk, both so poor as to be almost unfit for use; two white [grizzly]
bears were also seen, and a muskrat swimming across the river. The river
continues wide and of about the same rapidity as the ordinary current
of the Ohio. The low grounds are wide, the moister parts containing timber;
the upland is extremely broken, without wood, and in some places seems
as if it had slipped down in masses of several acres in surface.
The mineral appearance of salts, coal, and sulphur, with the burnt hill
and pumice-stone, continue, and a bituminous water about the color of
strong lye, with the taste of Glauber's salts and a slight tincture of alum.
Many geese were feeding in the prairies, and a number of magpies,
which build their nests much like those of the blackbird, in trees,
and composed of small sticks, leaves, and grass, open at the top;
the egg is of a bluish-brown color, freckled with reddish-brown spots.
We also killed a large hooting-owl resembling that of the United States
except that it was more booted and clad with feathers. On the hills
are many aromatic herbs, resembling in taste, smell, and appearance
the sage, hyssop, wormwood, southernwood, juniper, and dwarf cedar; a plant
also about two or three feet high, similar to the camphor in smell and taste;
and another plant of the same size, with a long, narrow, smooth, soft leaf,
of an agreeable smell and flavor, which is a favorite food of the antelope,
whose necks are often perfumed by rubbing against it."
What the journalist intended to say here was that at least
one of the aromatic herbs resembled sage, hyssop, wormwood,
and southernwood, and that there were junipers and dwarf cedars.
The pungent-smelling herb was the wild sage, now celebrated
in stories of adventure as the sage-brush.
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