day. We began seeing Buffaloes again in small gangs, but this afternoon and evening we have seen a goodly number, probably more than a hundred. We also saw fifteen or twenty Antelopes. I saw ten at once, and it was beautiful to see them running from the top of a high hill down to its base, after which they went round the same hill, and were lost to us. We have landed three times to cut wood, and are now busy at it on Cedar Island.[1] At both the previous islands we saw an immense number of Buffalo tracks, more, indeed, than I had anticipated. The whole of the prairies as well as the hills have been so trampled by them that I should have considered it quite unsafe for a man to travel on horseback. The ground was literally covered with their tracks, and also with bunches of hair, while the bushes and the trunks of the trees, between which they had passed, were hanging with the latter substance. I collected some, and intend to carry a good deal home. We found here an abundance of what is called the White Apple,[2] but which is anything else but an apple. The fruit grows under the ground about six inches; it is about the size of a hen's egg, covered with a woody, hard pellicle, a sixteenth of an inch thick, from which the fruit can be
- ↑ "'Cedar' is the name which has been applied by various authors to several different islands, many miles apart, in this portion of the river. … We reached an island extending for two miles in the middle of the river, covered with red cedar, from which it derives its name of Cedar Island." ("Lewis and Clark," ed. of 1893.)
"Cedar Island is said to be 1075 miles from the mouth of the Missouri. On the steep banks of this long, narrow island which lies near the southwest bank, there were thickets of poplars, willows, and buffalo-berry; the rest of the island is covered with a dark forest of red cedars, of which we immediately felled a goodly number. The notes of numerous birds were heard in the gloom of the cedar forest, into which no ray of sun could penetrate. Here, too, we found everywhere traces of the elks and stags, and saw where they had rubbed off the bark with their antlers." ("Travels in North America," Maximilian, Prince of Wied, p. 144.) - ↑ Translating the usual French name (pomme blanche) of the Psoralea esculenta.
