other rows of circular spots of the same color on the sides
along the edge of the scuta; there are one hundred and
seventy-six scuta on the belly, and seventeen on the tail."

Two days later, the journal records that one of the party
killed a grizzly bear, "which, though shot through the heart,
ran at his usual pace nearly a quarter of a mile before he
fell."

The mouth of the Musselshell River, which was one of
the notable points that marked another stage in the jour-
ney, was reached on the twentieth of May. This stream
empties into the Missouri two thousand two hundred and
seventy miles above its mouth, and is still known by the
name given it by its discoverers. The journal says:

"It is one hundred and ten yards wide, and contains
more water than streams of that size usually do in this
country; its current is by no means rapid, and there is
every appearance of its being susceptible of navigation by
canoes for a considerable distance. Its bed is chiefly formed
of coarse sand and gravel, with an occasional mixture of
black mud; the banks are abrupt and nearly twelve feet
high, so that they are secure from being overflowed; the
water is of a greenish-yellow cast, and much more trans-
parent than that of the Missouri, which itself, though
clearer than below, still retains its whitish hue and a por-
tion of its sediment. Opposite the point of junction the
current of the Missouri is gentle, and two hundred and
twenty-two yards in width; the bed is principally of mud,
the little sand remaining being wholly confined to the points,
and the water is still too deep to use the setting-pole.

"If this be, as we suppose, the Musselshell, our Indian
information is that it rises in the first chain of the Rocky
mountains not far from the sources of the Yellowstone,
whence in its course to this place it waters a high broken

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