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Show THE SHANNON----WHITE RIVER----RUINS OF CEDAR FORT. 147 The next morning we found the Assiniboin at the foot of these hills. Our steamer could not be moved till noon, and then did not proceed far, but lay to near a sand bank. On the morning of the 24th, Major Bean left us, accompanied by Mr. Bodmer, to go by land to Sioux Agency, or Fort Lookout, where he intended to wait for us. He had procured saddle-horses from that place. As we expected the keel-boat, to lighten the ship, we had time to go ashore and make an excursion inland. At eleven o'clock the bell summoned us to return. The vessel was made to drop about 2,000 paces down the river, and then, with much exertion, to proceed along the north-east bank, where we found the Maria keel-boat, which had likewise run aground, but had been got afloat by its crew, who laboured up to their waists in water, while the people were lightening our steamer. Mr. Me Kenzie and myself went on shore to explore the neighbouring eminences, where we found many rare plants. The geology and mineralogy of these hills are likewise interesting. The surface consists of clay of various colours, partly resembling lithomarge ; plates and fragments of foliated gypsum were scattered around, and seemed to stand out in the clay. When we reached the bare sterile heights which belong to the black burnt stratifications, I found the soil quite different from what it had appeared to me when I looked at it from below. The whole consists of a clay, which has undergone the effects of fire, and is partly burnt black on the surface. We saw no living creatures on these bare heights, except the finch {Fringilla grammaca), first described by Say. Several caves or dens of wolves, foxes, and marmots, were observed in the declivities of the hills. Between four and five o'clock, the keel-boat having been sent on before, the Yellow Stone proceeded along the north-east bank. Near the Shannon, or Dry River, the sun sank behind the poplar wood on the bank, and we lay to for the night. From the Shannon, the mouth of which is on the west side, the territory of the Sioux nations is reckoned to extend up the Missouri. On the east bank, as I have observed, it begins much sooner. At five o'clock, on the following morning, the 25th of May, we had already reached the White River, and at noon came to a place where the Cedar Fort, a trading post of the Missouri Fur Company, had formerly stood. When the Company was dissolved, this and other settlements were abandoned, and demolished by the Indians. Directly opposite, on the east bank, a stratum of earth burnt till 1823, in consequence of which a large portion of a hill fell, and now stands isolated before the bank ; it is seventy or eighty feet high, and 150 feet long. In the course of the day we came to a place where an Arikkara village had formerly stood, on the ridge of the hills, which was destroyed by the Sioux, and the inhabitants expelled. Opposite to this was Fort Lookout, where the French Fur Trading Company had a post. A little further up the river we saw, on the hills, some burying-places of the Sioux Indians ; most of them were formed of a high platform, on four stakes, on which the corpse, sown up in skins, lies at full length; others consisted of stakes and brushwood, like a kind of hedge, in the middle of which the deceased is buried in the ground. We were told that the son of a chief was buried in one of the latter, in a |