to cross when the ice is weak Sink and are drowned – and in the Spring both sides of the River are in Several places covered with rotten Carcasses & skelletons of Buffaloes, Elks &^c[.] These animals which often float down the current among the ice for hundred of miles are prefered by the natives to any other kind of provisions[.] [W]hen the skin is raised you will see the flesh of a greenish hue, and ready to become alive at the least exposure to the sun, and are so ripe, and tender that little boiling is required[.] The stench is abs-olutely intolerable[.] Yet the soup made from it which becomes bottle green is reckoned delicious[.] So fond of are the mandanes of putrid meat that they bury animals whole in the winter, for the consumption of the spring.

The water of the Mississourie this spring was uncommonly low and in consequence drowned animals were not so very abundant as usual at the breaking up of the Navigation[.] However there were still plenty and I had an oppertunity of observing the Courage and dexterity of the Young mandanes among the floating ice hauling ashore –

some

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