September 20, 1833
Dense, cold fog on the river; until 8:30 we were numb with cold. Bull elk cries resounded in several places. Buffalo appeared individually in the river and on the rough pine mountains; everywhere one saw their deeply trodden paths, or trails, leading down to the [river]bank. At 8:30 we made a big fire in the cottonwood forest; opposite, behind the prairie, buffalo were moving.
Two hours later we continued our voyage. The weather became nice, but some fog rose; the sun long struggled with it. We saw buffalo and three wolves. On the elevations of the right bank, we saw a large bear. Bodmer and Dreidoppel tried to catch up with it, but it went too far away. At the clay bank where we landed, I found many fossil bivalve mussels quite similar to the Ostrea. Buffalo bulls moved close to us to the right and left along the water, some of them in the river; later [they] rolled in the sand. At every opportunity our men ate the small red fruits of the roses in large amounts; [they] have a bland taste. The common raven and the black crow called out in the lofty blue sky; an eagle was perched on a dry pine on the hill. Soon, a buffalo herd; to the right, a white wolf; to the left on the prairie along the forest, buffalo. The wind was cool, but in this region several swallows were still flying above the river. Buffalo in large numbers in the willows, on the sandy shore, on the prairie, and on the hills. An hour later at the bend of the river, we saw Somewhat farther downriver we came upon a large buffalo herd with many cows and calves. Morrin and Dreidoppel got out on the right bank, crept under the cover of the willow thickets toward them, and came within 20 paces of the herd, which had gone down a ravine to the river to drink. They shot and killed two fat cows, which supplied us with a quantity of excellent meat, [so] large [it] covered the elk antler of sixteen points fastened in the bow of my boat. The redwinged woodpecker (Picus auratus var.?) flew away from the bank.
The afternoon grew splendid and very hot. The buffalo herd [we had] fired upon had slowly fled up over the hills. Farther [on] and to the left along the sides, nine buffalo; to the right, a wolf. On a steep, bare bank of the prairie to the right there was a small flight of six to eight blue finches (Fringilla amoena), which were about to migrate. A wolf and several elk to the left, close together on the sandbar. We put in to the right at the shore and cooked. The bank was high; on it, [an] old cottonwood forest full of elk and buffalo, but we did not want to shoot here.
After three-quarters of an hour, we continued our journey. We soon reached a dry cottonwood forest to the left. Aquila leucocephala on tall treetops. Before the willow thickets to the right stood a large bull elk [that] proudly looked at us. We saw buffalo somewhat farther downstream; we heard their bellowing everywhere. A lone swallow hovered above the river, and at dusk many bats flew above the smooth surface of the river. When the sun had set, we found ourselves at the place where on 28 July we had set up a large elk antler on the heights of the left bank. We saw it, but it had fallen over, and it was too late in the day to get it. Mr. Bodmer and Dreidoppel got out and looked under the steep wall for shell impressions and fossils, of which we took several very interesting ones along, including the narrow, fishlike bodies that occur everywhere here and that Catlin erroneously represented as petrified snakes. This place is about 10 miles above the Musselshell River. Two bends of the river farther downstream from here is a quite similar wall with the same shells and impressions found along [this] bank as well as in all these clay hills.
We continued on in the most beautiful moonlight until 8:30 and anchored for the night a mile above the Musselshell River at a steep bank to the right. Our bears maintained a terrible clamor and put us in a far from trifling predicament. The great horned owl called out until eleven o’clock and then again at dawn. The night was not so cold by far as the previous one. During the evening the moon was beautiful, nearly half full, and [it] shone until about eleven o’clock. Early in the morning, we found interesting shells and impressions as well as narrow, elongated, fishlike bodies in the rocks of our campsite.