ting all animosity and fear, met in the face of the common danger; there it was that all found safety at the time of the flood, separating afterward, when the waters subsided, each going his way and resuming his former habits or work, to increase and multiply and replenish the desolate earth.
Cannonball river is interesting by reason of its numerous stone " balls," of all sizes, which gave it its name. These balls abound on the high rocky hills near and above the mouth of the river, for a distance of several miles. This is another curiosity for the geologist to explain. There are tiny balls as big as marbles, and others gradually larger until you come to masses weighing Zoo pounds.
All along the river are a great number of eminences bearing names which recall Indian memories. Such is the Horsehead Butte.
A rise, both sudden and unexpected, in the Yellowstone and other rivers coming from the south, once lifted the ice in the Missouri and broke it up into large, strong and compact cakes. This rise took place on a dark night in the winter. These ice-blocks made a formidable dike in a bend of the river just below a large Indian camp. The dike built itself up on either bank as far as the bluffs which terminate the low alluvial bottoms. This vast gorge, swollen more and more by the ice and the immense increase of water, rose to a height of forty feet, until at last the formidable dam across the Missouri yielded to the pressure of the water, which rushed through impetuously and irre sistibly. A large number of Indians perished in the flood, with all their horses and other property. The whole affair took only a few hours. The furious waters of the night had carried the ice out of sight, and before sunrise the river had resumed its ordinary even flow. The valley where this frightful and deplorable catastrophe took place resounded for a long time with the weeping of the poor unhappy savages who had escaped the wreck; and long afterward it bore the marks of their mourning.