University of Virginia Library

[Clark:]

July 3rd.. Wednesday 1805

A fine morning wind from the S W all the party employed
some about the boat, attaching the skins & sowing
them to the sections, others prepareing timber, some burning
tar of the drift pine, some airring and repacking the stores &
Goods, & others hunting for Meet to make pemitigon & for
the use of their skins to cover the canoes & boat. a small
shower at 1 oClock which did scercely wet the grass. one
buffalow and two antilopes killed this evening. Six beaver &
2 orters has been killed at this camp within a fiew days. We
discover no fish above the falls as yet. the only timber in
this part of the countrey is willow, a fiew cotton trees which is
neither large nor tall, Box alder and red wood (Bois roche arrow
wood) The water tolerably clear and soft in the river, current
jentle and bottoms riseing from the water; no appearance of
the river riseing more than a few feet above the falls, as high
up as we have yet explored but few trees on the Std Side
the grass is high and fine near the river. the winds has
blown for several days from the S.W. I think it possible that
those almost perpetial S W. winds, proceed from the agency
of the Snowey Mountains and the wide leavel and untimbered
plains which streach themselves along their borders for an
emence distance, that the air comeing in contact with the snow
is suddenly chilled and condensed, thus becomeing heavyer
than the air beneath in the plains it glides down the sides of
those mountains and decends to the plains, where by the constant
action of the sun on the face of the untimbered country
there is a partial vacuom formed for it's reception I have
observed that the winds from this quarter is always the coaldest
and most violent which we experience, yet I am far from giveing
full credit to this hypotheses on this subject; if I find
however on the opposit side of these mountains that the winds
take a contrary direction I shall then have full faith. (The

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