Edited by Tom Schweich  

"… for an excursion on foot, intending to ascend the Cannon-ball creek to the mountains which appeared to be about five miles distant … creek is rapid and clear, flowing over a bed paved with rounded masses of granite and gneiss. It is from a supposed resemblance of these masses to cannon balls that the creek received its name from the French hunters. … The plain [is] thinly covered with prickly pears, and a scanty growth of starved and rigid grasses. Among these the hygrometric stipa, (s. juncea. s. barbata,) is extremely troublesome, its barbed and pointed seeds adhering and penetrating, like the quills of a porcupine, into every part of the dress with which they come in contact. The long and rigid awn is contorted or straight, in proportion to the humidity or dryness of the atmosphere ; indicating the changes in this respect with the precision of the nicest hygrometer.

"The detached party extended their walk about eight miles without finding that they had very considerably diminished the apparent distance to the base of the mountain. Near the place of [their] halt, they observed some small sandstone ridges similar to those on the Platte below, and collected, among other plants the species of currant (ribes aureum?) so often mentioned by Lewis and Clarke, the fruit of which formed an important article of the subsistence of their party while crossing the Rocky Mountains. [16]

… Note [16]. Page 185. The ripened fruit of this widely-distributed shrub is variable in colour. In dry and exposed situations about the higher parts of the mountains, we have met with the berries of a deep purple, while in the lowlands, they are fulvous or nearly white. On the Cannon-ball we saw the common virgin's bower. Clematis virginica, Ph. Lycopus europeus, Liatris graminifolia, Sium latifolium, Œnothera biennis, and other plants, common in the east, with the more rare Linum Lewisii, Ph. and Eriogonum sericeum, &c. …