On the 5th of July we left our camp at an early hour, and ascended the Platte about ten miles. Here the party encamped for the day;[134] and Mr. Peale and Dr. James, with two riflemen, went out for an excursion on foot, intending to ascend the Cannon-ball creek to the mountains, which appeared to be about five miles distant. [134] The journey of July 4, and the ten miles travelled on the fifth, would carry the party thirty-five or forty miles up the river from the mouth of St. Vrain's Creek; this would, for their camp of the fifth, bring them near the site of Denver. Vermillion Creek, which was crossed early on the sixth, is evidently Cherry Creek, which flows through the present city.—ED. This 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 has received its name from the French hunters. The channel is sunk from fifty to one hundred feet below the common level of the plain. This plain consists of a bed of coarse pebbles, gravel, and sand; and its surface 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 the 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. They had unluckily forgotten to make any provision for dinner, and now found themselves fatigued and hungry at the distance of eight miles from the encampment of the main body and so far from the mountains, that it was evidently {185} impossible they should reach them and return on the same day. It was therefore determined to relinquish the attempt, and Mr. Peale was fortunate enough to kill a couple of curlews, which were roasted and eaten without loss of time. Near the place of this 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.[135]