early in afternoon. Cart had had a bad overturn yesterday. It was shaky from the start but on coming on bad wheels loosened & one shaft broken. The Commissioner (4) coming into camp early in the forenoon took several teams from the parties & I fortunately got a cart of which Ashe (5) was deprived, in exchange for my very bad one. Started in buckboard at 4 & caught up to teams at Grant's [a store and tavern operated by the farmer] at 6. Got some eggs from Grant at the usual rate of 5O cents a dozen. Found TH. [Featherstone Haugh?] camped about a mile beyong Grant's at a coulee.

T'he country remarkably dry. Grant's well dried up which not known to have occurred before. All swamps &c dry. Some inhabitants say never knew so dry a spring. A poor lookout for water ahead.

[This paragraph from fly-leaf of diary]

1874 was not a year of great flood but the early breaking up of the ice & influx of water from the South was well marked. At Georgetown, Minnesota, the ice was going on April 20. At the Boundary the break up commenced on April 23. The ice was moving down the river rapidly on the 24, 25, 26 & part of the 27th on which day the first flat-boat arrived. On the 28th the river was perfectly clear, & the first steamboat arrived. On the same day the ice at Winnipeg began to move & it had cleared out on April 30, the steamer closely following it.

Much green grass now growing up among the old & pretty good feed for animals. Where the ground has been burned over however, though very green, very thin, & hard for horse to pick up enough.

Prairie covered in places with Anemone patens [Crocus anemone] nearly past its best. Also many specimens of Geum Triflorum? [Three-flowered Avens].

Found lines of small pretty hard nodules in clay bank shown in section at Pembina R. where camped last night.

(4)-Capt. Donald R. Cameron, Royal Artillery, Chief Commissioner, British Boundary commission.

(5)-William A. Ashe, Assistant Astronomer and friend of Dawson during previous summer.