July 31, 1833
Early in the morning, nice, clear weather; at 7:30, 75°F [23.9°C]. We got out on shore at the second bend of the river to the right—Mr. Mitchell, Bodmer, Dreidoppel, Doucette, both Beauchamps, and I—to search for the bear killed on a promontory. We went straight through the forest with the tall grass and the dense rosebushes scattered throughout it, when Mr. Mitchell, who had found a rattlesnake, suddenly called out to us. When I got there, it was completely untouched; I teased it with a piece of wood, which it struck at and rattled, [which,] however, was scarcely heard. We killed it and took it along.
From here we cut through the promontory and, after twenty minutes to half an hour, reached the place where the magnificent bear lay. A buffalo had sunk into the mud below, and the bear was eating it when Doucette approached with the canoe and shot a bullet through its chest. It had then climbed up the high bank and lay there dead. I measured the impressive bear and found it to be 6 feet and 2 inches long; the top of the head between the ears, 8 inches; the width of the fore-sole, 6 inches 4 lines. We immediately got down to work, skinned it, cut the thickest flesh from the bones—this took a good two hours—then tied it together as tightly as possible with a rope we had brought and pulled it up into the fork of an old cottonwood trunk stripped of its bark, where we fastened it with ropes to let it decay [so we could] take it along on our return from Fort McKenzie. The bear’ s skull was especially large and thick, its teeth rather worn. Its color was blackish brown with reddish brown hair tips: more reddish brown on the back and sides of the front part, the extremities blacker. It was rather fat.
When we were finished with this work, we followed the keelboat, which meanwhile had been pulled past us. Directly behind the forest, we found a wide, very long prairie along the river where there was a large village of prairie dogs (Arctomys ludoviciana). [We] shot six of these little animals. They sat on their hills singly or in twos and made their squeaking noise. Dreidoppel shot two of them in the head with birdshot. They continually flick their little tails. Sometimes we could get within 30 paces of them. We took our catch and several plants collected here. One of the prairie dogs was alive but was killed later.
We went through a dense willow thicket [with] broad paths that the buffalo and elk had recently crossed. The keelboat hoisted [its] sail, and we had to walk for several hours in the intense heat before we saw it again. We made our way through rugged prairies and dense wooded promontories where gooseberries grew copiously and refreshed the hot wanderers somewhat. Then we went through [more] rugged prairies with thorny bushes where a new Syngenesia with many yellow flowers and sticky leaves (Brachyris euthamiae Nutt.?) was blooming profusely. Then we reached rugged sandstone hills, jumped half-sliding down over high sandy walls, and refreshed ourselves with the water of the Missouri. 
Swallows were nesting here in large numbers in their semicircular nests, which they paste to the rocks with clay. Wilson has depicted them. One sees very many such nests together.
We now followed the narrow, often slippery low bank to a wooded promontory where Deschamps, Papin, Dauphin, and Saucier were sitting. The boat sailed past us; we refreshed ourselves at the river and then hurried on for another half hour to a sandbar off the next wooded promontory, where they fetched us and took us on board. Today was Mr. Mitchell’s birthday, to whose health we drank. All the hunters [together] had shot nothing but six prairie dogs, a great horned owl, and a wild goose, [the latter by] Mr. Mitchell. This morning, in the first wooded promontory, we had crossed a creek, where we laid a fallen trunk across the mud to help [us] get across. A wolf was close to us. Later we crossed two or three more halfdry creeks until we reached the ship, and on the left bank [we] counted two [more] creek outlets. We passed several islands, some with willows and woods and connected with now-dry sandbars. From time to time the river’s channel was narrow. The mountains [were] gray-green, overgrown with all kinds of plants and scattered spruces. Early in the morning we had a glimpse of the Little Rocky Mountains, which the Blackfoot call Wolf Mountains (Makúie-Stöki—‘i’ short). They have several pointed, conical peaks and appeared in the most beautiful blue color at a distance of about 30 miles. The creek where we saw the wolf was North Mountain Creek; Little Dog Creek to the left, two more to the right, and South Mountain Creek on the left bank.
At four o’clock, when the sail had been lowered and we had put in at the right bank, we saw before us a number of buffalo cows. The hunters immediately went out [after them] and soon called for people to fetch the meat. They had killed one bull and two cows. After the meat had been loaded, we followed the right bank, which now had completely bare hills of sandstone and clay. Among the lower ones here, a steep head rises vertically about 150 feet high. Its lower half is a brittle sandstone; the top dome [is] dark, grayish brown clay. On the bank there are large blocks of sandstone. Wooded lowland soon joined these hills again. A pleasantly cool wind was blowing. At a sandbar to the right, they took to the oars and rowed straight across the river. On the other side [there were] woods and a steep, 15-foot-high sandy bank. We sailed up along it a few hundred paces and stayed there for the night. The evening was dark, but the weather [was] pleasantly cool and refreshing. We no longer saw many mosquitoes; we probably outlasted them.