September 23, 1833
Early in the morning, nice and pleasant. The river made big bends, [and] therefore there was little current. The region is uniform: woods or steep prairie banks and mostly bare hills in the background. On the steep bank, a nice red fox with a very large white tip on its tail walked past us; we could not shoot. We saw only a few buffalo. Several chevreuils [deer] and elk on the bank. Eagles, magpies, and kingfishers; [the latter], infrequent during the summer, [were now] everywhere.
At 8:30 we put in on the right bank where the prairie bordered on a forest; [there] was a hollow, in the shelter of which we started a fire and prepared breakfast. We drank our coffee and ate buffalo meat on a fallen tree trunk with thick branches. Because a strong wind arose, we remained here all day. [Seated] on the trunk, I wrote in my journal. Dreidoppel brought the hide of our bull elk ashore to dry it. We set out guards facing the prairie and the forest. I was later occupied cleaning a bighorn skull when, over on the sandbar, a large bear appeared. It did not notice us; it went straight into the river and swam across. We posted ourselves behind trees and waited for it. It came so close to our boat that it became frightened. We could easily have shot it, but it would have drifted away; we could do nothing but watch as it turned around and went back over into the forest. On the prairie, where we lay at anchor because of the powerful wind, we saw no animals other than big grasshoppers almost 2 inches long with black, white-bordered wings. They flew about like butterflies, and at first this is what I thought they were, but, except for a very few, those more delicate flower-hunters have already disappeared. The whole prairie was covered with [a] few species of grass and primarily Artemisia. The thorn [once again] grew here, [though] it had seemed to have come to an end [upstream] several hours ago.
[By] five o’clock in the evening, the wind had abated; we continued on. The hill chains were low and uniform; beautiful woodlands alternated with prairie on the horizon. The evening was beautiful. Around [a] bend of the river, in the broad water surface, stood a cow elk two years old. Morrin wounded [it] with the rifle, but it reached the forest. A wolf on the bank was a witness to this scene and [must] surely have pursued the wounded animal. Ardea herodias on the sandbar. Farther away, another big bull elk on a sandbar; it was always in the evening when one saw them, especially in the river, cooling off. A half an hour farther [on], the lightgreen (pulpy?) thorn still occasionally grew on the prairie, but it [would] soon come to an end. A bull elk to the right at the willows. The region had become very flat. Before the woodlands we saw several more bull elk; they were bugling everywhere in the forest and along the river.
We navigated until nine o’clock by moonlight and ran aground several times; the men had to push in the water. Then we put in below a prairie where, on [a] sloping, moist area, we had to put oars under our bedding in order not to slide into the river. I had the unpleasant experience of throwing my only hat, which I did not recover, into the river. At 9:30 northern lights were visible; the night was warm and pleasant.