September 25, 1833
At 5:30, departure. Bull elk bugled in the thickets on the bank, and Morrin shot a very fat cow [there], soon after we had passed a brook on the left bank at six o’clock, probably the Rivière bourbeuse. Farther on, buffalo on the left bank; to the right we heard the bawling of an entire herd. The region farther ahead was very flat. Sandbars and forest all around. At 8:20 we halted at the right bank. The forest here was sparse with tall, straight cottonwoods; its floor [was] overgrown with short rosebushes, now with red leaves, behind which the prairie was bordered by hills and overgrown with white-bluish Artemisia. We tracked deer, wolves, elk, and other animals everywhere along the bank.
Departure at 10:30 past a long sandbar where the teals permitted us to come very close. All the sandbars were crisscrossed with thousands of animal tracks. The heat was great. Near us on the left bank, a big wolf. Magpies and ospreys very numerous. A small bird like a sandpiper, probably Phalaropus, was swimming on the river. A sparrow hawk approached it, and it quickly submerged. The river made very large bends around long, wooded promontories; in them [grew] many ash trees, the foliage of which was already completely yellow. The river in this region was mostly bordered on both sides with ash and cottonwood forest; the former were bright yellow, the latter still mostly green.
At one o’clock, when we let the boat drift and our men were eating, a wolf swam through the river before us. A coot was swimming along the bank. After one o’clock, [a] low flat region and broad prairie bordered by flat hills along the right bank; to the left, [a] cottonwood thicket. We saw many coots today; they were stopping [here] on their migration. [We saw] little game, however; it was too hot, [and the animals] were resting. I found a place where the bull elk had been striking [their antlers] against the cottonwood saplings. To the right in the scattered forest, a large number of crows.
At 2:30 a severe storm suddenly arose out of the west-southwest. We saw it coming and had just [enough] time to swing the boat around at the right bank behind a trunk lying in the water and to fasten it there; [the trunk] held back the powerful waves. The bank was steep; on it [was] a big, sparse forest, [its] floor covered with Symphoria. Along the edge, prairie overgrown with sage. The storm developed rapidly; we were afraid it would knock the trees down on our heads. It drove the dust from the sandbars at the left shore into our forest, so that the sky was darkened and we could not protect ourselves from it. Sparrow hawks, common ravens, crows, and blackbirds, which had their haunts here, fled to the ground and deep into the forest. The sky turned murky [and] the clouds were torn apart. We lay about 500–600 paces above the remnants of the fort that Mr. Mitchell had constructed in the summer of 1832 [after] his keelboat was wrecked here. This has always been a dangerous, stormy area. On our ascent we had reached this place on 17 July. The region is flat and exposed to storms.
Dreidoppel, who had gone into the prairie some distance away from the rest of us, found six antelope in a strip of trees, where they found shelter from the wind. The buck was continually prodding one of the does; he held her back again and again when she wanted to get away. Meanwhile, a most impressive bull elk appeared over on the sandbar and remained there a long time. In the forest Dreidoppel found fourteen cast-off elk antlers, of which two that belonged together measured 4 feet 1 inch (French measure) in a straight line. During the night the bull elk trumpeted and a bear roared on the other side near the forest. The night was not cold, but the wind [was] very strong. For our protection we had put up an Indianstyle fortress of dried-out trunks. Toward morning the wind subsided.