It Grows Abundantly
In The Alkali Country, And Is Browsed Upon By A Species
Of Grouse Known As The Sage-Hen.
Junipers and dwarf cedars
also grow on the hills of the alkali and sage-brush country.
The sage belongs to the Artemisia family of plants.
Four days later, the journal had this interesting entry:
"The country to-day presented the usual variety of highlands
interspersed with rich plains. In one of these we observed
a species of pea bearing a yellow flower, which is now
in blossom, the leaf and stalk resembling the common pea.
It seldom rises higher than six inches, and the root is perennial.
On the rose-bushes we also saw a quantity of the hair of a buffalo,
which had become perfectly white by exposure and resembled the wool
of the sheep, except that it was much finer and more soft and silky.
A buffalo which we killed yesterday had shed his long hair,
and that which remained was about two inches long,
thick, fine, and would have furnished five pounds of wool,
of which we have no doubt an excellent cloth may be made.
Our game to-day was a beaver, a deer, an elk, and some geese. . . .
"On the hills we observed considerable quantities of dwarf juniper,
which seldom grows higher than three feet. We killed in the course
of the day an elk, three geese, and a beaver. The beaver on this part
of the Missouri are in greater quantities, larger and fatter, and their fur
is more abundant and of a darker color, than any we have hitherto seen.
Their favorite food seems to be the bark of the cottonwood and willow,
as we have seen no other species of tree that has been touched by them,
and these they gnaw to the ground through a diameter of twenty inches."
And on the twenty-first of April the journal says:
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