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"The game is in great quantities, but the buffalo are not so numerous as they were some days ago; two rattlesnakes were seen to-day, and one of them was killed.

It resembles those of the Middle Atlantic States, being about thirty inches long, of a yellowish brown on the back and sides, variegated with a row of oval dark brown spots lying transversely on the back from the neck to the tail, and two 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 journey, 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.