September 26, 1833
We departed early. We immediately reached the remains of Mr. Mitchell’s fort, called le petit fort [the little fort]; close to it [we] saw a flight of prairie hens or faisans (Tetrao phasianellus). A migrating swan. Low region, sandbars, forest alternating with prairie and flat ridges. About 6:30 we reached the forest where Dreidoppel had prepared the cabri. The river makes big bends, which are all alike. Two swans on a dead arm [of the river] did not wait for us. After seven o’clock we halted at a sandbar off the right bank and cooked. Departure at 9:15. In the next bend of the river, a black-tailed deer walked along the edge of the hills. Morrin wounded [it] from the boat. Dreidoppel followed it for awhile, but we did not get it. Now [the day] was exceptionally hot. At 10:15 we were at the forest where we had gone ashore at the time we searched for buffalo beyond the hills with Mitchell, Deschamps, and Papin and returned to the keelboat again at noon after a long, hot trudge. A magnificent eagle flew off. At the next bend of the river, along the left bank, open prairie where a herd of buffalo was grazing. Crows and common ravens in large numbers. We saw fewer magpies today. Kingfishers [were] seen. On the flat, large surface of the river that now followed, Mr. Bodmer shot a [young] wood duck (Anas sponsa) of this year; [its] plumage was just beginning to take on a metallic iridescence here and there.
Toward twelve o’clock the sky became very murky, [which] could only indicate bad weather. The river made big bends. The region was low-lying. The bank, mostly wooded; often beautiful woodlands. The bank on the one side [was], for the most part, steep and completely trampled by buffalo. The trails stamped down by them here and there look like small, steep gullies. In many places the forest was a mixture of yellow, red, and green. Big sandbars everywhere. About 12:45, a very wide place in the Missouri. It rained for a moment. Later, to the right, small rocky domes with multicolored thickets; here they all had more of an autumn coloration than at Fort McKenzie. In the willows to the left, a wolf. Rain. A prairie hen to the left on a trunk lying on the ground; to the right, a wolf. The rain started and stopped at short intervals. At a later bend of the river, extensive sandbars along the promontory to the right; to the left, a flat, extensive prairie with 10-foot-high, steep, dark-gray clay banks. In many places today we had seen significant flights of small finches flying back and forth across the river, some of them settling down on the sandbars. Several chevreuils [deer] to the left on the sandbar. The rain began.
At dusk we anchored at a wet, muddy sandbar; from seven to ten o’clock, I sat with Dreidoppel on our beds under the umbrella. Then, [having] no other choice, we crept under our buffalo hides, which were soon completely wet. At three o’clock the rain subsided; we got up; everything was soaked. A wolf had been making a close circle around us the entire night.