carcass; but on reaching the spot, nothing was there. A fine large Raven passed at one hundred yards from us, but I did not shoot. Bell found a few small shells, and Harris shot a Yellow-rumped Warbler. We have seen several White Pelicans, Geese, Black-headed Gulls, and Green-backed Swallows, but nothing new. The night is cloudy and intimates more rain. We are fast to a willowed shore, and are preparing lines to try our luck at catching a Catfish or so. I was astonished to find how much stiffened I was this morning, from the exercise I took on horseback yesterday, and think that now it would take me a week, at least, to accustom my body to riding as I was wont to do twenty years ago. The timber is becoming more scarce as we proceed, and I greatly fear that our only opportunities of securing wood will be those afforded us by that drifted on the bars.
May 12, Friday. The morning was foggy, thick, and calm. We passed the river called the Sioux Pictout,[1] a small stream formerly abounding with Beavers, Otters, Muskrats, etc., but now quite destitute of any of these creatures. On going along the banks bordering a long and wide prairie, thick with willows and other small brush-wood, we saw four Black-tailed Deer[2] immediately on the bank; they trotted away without appearing to be much alarmed; after a few hundred yards, the two largest, probably males, raised themselves on their hind feet and pawed at each other, after the manner of stallions.
- ↑ Little Sioux River of present geography, in Harrison Co., Iowa: see "Lewis and Clark," ed. of 1893, P. 69.—E. C.
- ↑ Otherwise known as the Mule Deer, from the great size of the ears, and the peculiar shape of the tail, which is white with a black tuft at the tip, and suggests that of the Mule. It is a fine large species, next to the Elk or Wapiti in stature, and first became generally known from the expedition of Lewis and Clark. It is the Cervus macrotis of Say, figured and described under this name by Aud. and Bach. Quad. N. A. ii., 1851, p. 206, pl. 78, and commonly called by later naturalists Cariacus macrotis. But its first scientific designation is Damelaphus hemionus, given by C. S. Rafinesque in 1817.—E. C.
