Water had been unusually high all along the Yellowstone during the early summer rise, the crest of which was now over by about a fortnight. The discharge from Clark's Fork had been especially heavy, and the effects of this I began to encounter as soon as I resumed my run to Billings. Scores of new channels had been scoured out and countless thousands of big cottonwoods and willows uprooted in the process. Most of the latter were stranded on shallow bars, but every now and then some great giant had anchored itself squarely in mid-channel. It took no end of care to avoid them, and it was a distinct relief to find that the wind had now fallen very light. My old strawberry lady had estimated the distance to Billings as about twenty miles, but such was the extreme deviousness of the endlessly divided channels that it must have been greatly in excess of that. One minute I would be in what was undoubtedly the main channel. The next I would be picking what seemed the likeliest of four or five sprawling chutes, with whichever one I took usually dividing and redividing until I found myself scraping through the shallows and all but grounded. With no town in sight as eight o'clock began to usher in the long midsummer twilight, I landed near a large farmhouse on the left bank to make inquiries. The buildings were fine and modern and the irrigated acres of great richness, but the people turned out to be Russian tenants, and not much for the softer things of life. All of the dozen or more occupants of the big kitchen wore bib overalls, the bottoms puckered in with a zouave-trousers effect. All were barefooted. The father and mother wore shirts. For the rest, including the grown children, the only garments were the comfortable and adequate overalls. Left to himself, the simple _moujik_ hits upon some very practical ideas.