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Show R ii 244 THE ENVIRONS OF FORT MC KENZIE first table for six persons, lived entirely on meat, so that we may assume that two buffaloes daily were required for their consumption. When we consider the generally very good appetites of the Canadians, of whom it is proverbially said that two of them will nearly devour a whole side of a buffalo, it is evident how necessary it is to have good hunters, and also to purchase large quantities of meat from the Indians. They generally receive twenty balls and the necessary powder for all the flesh of a buffalo cow, or even less when these animals are numerous; but as many as forty charges for a gun are paid them when the buffaloes are at a distance. A level prairie surrounds this fort; and, about 800 paces beyond it, the chain of hills, about 80 to 100 feet high, runs in the direction from south to north, and about 2000 paces above the fort reaches the Missouri, and then runs along its bank. The banks of the river, and the low islands on it, are here and there bordered with wood and bushes, and some islands are entirely covered with them. On ascending to the top of the chain of hills, you look over a level dry prairie, in which, at a small distance, are the pretty deep beds of two rivers, Maria River and Teton River, called, by Lewis and Clarke, Tansy River.* The latter, which is a small river, flows through a beautifully verdant valley, the bottom of which is covered with tall, shady poplars; there is good pasture of high grasses, and other plants. It falls into the Maria not far above its mouth, after having flowed for some distance almost parallel to the Missouri, to which it approaches so nearly, at between three and four miles from the fort, that the piece of land which separates the two rivers, is not more than 500 or 600 paces broad. Below the fort, in the first bend of the river, is an island, called Horse Island, where the horses belonging to the fort are sent to graze in the winter. They never have any other food than grass in summer; and in the winter, the bark of poplar trees, which they gnaw off. They never enter a stable. The south bank of the Missouri consists of high clay walls, in which there are doubtless strata of sand-stone, because numbers of beautiful impressions of shells are found immediately at the edge of the bank. These high walls must be very dangerous to the fort, in case of an attack by the Indians, because an effective fire may be made from them into the internal quadrangle of the fort. This dangerous position was one of the causes which led to the resolution of founding a new settlement further up the river. The Missouri itself does not abound in fish in the neighbourhood of Fort Me Kenzie, yet soft shell turtles are sometimes caught, as well as cat-fish, of the two species already mentioned, one of which we obtained during our stay, and which, as proof of the voracity of these animals, had in its stomach a stone polished by the action of the water, five inches long and four and a half broad. A sturgeon, of a species which, we were told, is not found in the Mississippi, was caught here, and universally considered as an extraordinary rarity. * I must here observe, that Lewis and Clarke's large special map is very correct for the country about Fort Me Kenzie. |
