July 12, 1833
In the morning, slightly overcast sky and sunshine; cool wind. At eight o’clock, 65°F [18.3°C]. On both banks we had willow thickets alternating with forest. Navigation was difficult; many trees were chopped off. After eight o’clock we came to a point on the left bank, to which we crossed, where the current was very strong and there was a strong vortex (remous) besides. When they tried to pull the boat over by force, the bride (the bottom rope that runs to the cordelle) broke, and the eddy drove the stern of the ship toward land. The men immediately let go of the cordelle, and the current forcibly drove the boat toward the bank. The long poles were immediately in readiness and broke the severity of the blow, but we got water in the cabin and earth on the ship. The bride was tied together again and efforts were begun anew, but this rope broke a second time, and we swung completely around. Papin quickly tied the rope to the stern of the boat, and we remained on the bank. Here Deschamps and Bodmer went hunting. We navigated farther along the steep bank with great exertion and even danger [and] escaped a second eddy. But the wind increased so greatly that there could be no thought of continuing the journey. It was now a matter of reaching a spot ahead of us where individual tall trees stood, somewhat distant from the bank. We attempted to reach this goal, and with pulling and pushing, we succeeded after half an hour. The anchor was cast and the boat secured as well as possible to await the wind here today.
The prairie where we lay at anchor was farther up the Corne de Cerf [Elkhorn Prairie], for in it one could still see the elk antler pyramid we visited yesterday. This wide prairie was completely overgrown with wormwood and the cactus with yellow blossoms, with smaller plants between them. An unpleasant wind whipped the sand into the air so that it penetrated into the ship. In a small bush of buffalo berry—even these bushes had a bluish silver color like the entire prairie—I found young, already almost fully grown magpies (Corvus pica), the turtledove, and several flycatchers; in the Artemisia shrubs, Fringilla grammacea and the black finch with white shoulder feathers, which Charles Bonaparte does not list in his work, Genera of North American Birds. The finches flew around in pairs in the low Artemisia shrubs of the prairie, perched on their tops, and looked for seeds on the ground, which they, like all birds, were forced to do by the strong wind today. The male is black with a long, completely white spot on the deck feathers of the wings; the female has a brownish color. Right where the ship lay there were four shelters, mere hunting huts or those of a war party, made of dry trunks and limbs laid together in quadrangular fashion; several of our men made a fire inside and cooked their meat there. I shot several birds and returned. Mr. Bodmer had pursued a very large rattlesnake, which slipped away from him into a hole in the ground. He saw the beautifully orange-colored Icterus, as well as many Falco sparverius, and brought back several plants, including the beautiful, fragrant, large-flowered Asclepias [— —], which forms thick clusters of flowers and grew nearby here in the forest. Thick elk antlers were found, and there are so many of these scattered all through these regions that one could easily have erected here in the prairie several more pyramids like those of the Indians. The last one certainly had over one thousand deer [elk] antlers.
At noon the wind increased, and because of it, I forgot to observe the temperature; it drove water into our cabin. In the afternoon Dreidoppel went hunting; Mr. Bodmer and I followed soon afterward. We found the variable hare in the Artemisia bushes of the prairie; and Dreidoppel shot several specimens of the black-and-white finch, which, in its mannerisms and way of life, seems to bear a great resemblance to Emberiza oryzivora Linn., and to some extent in its colors, too. At six o’clock the wind had abated a little, and thus we continued on and, toward dusk, anchored at the right bank near a forest. The evening was windy and cool. The hunters Papin and Deschamps had not shot [anything] this evening. The change of the temperature between yesterday and today was striking—yesterday hot, today cold—but we had a total respite from the mosquitoes.