At The Distance Of Six Miles We
Stopped On A Bleak Sand-Bar, Where We Thought Ourselves Secure From
Any
Attack during the night, and also safe from the mosquitoes.
We had made but twenty-two miles, but in the
Course of the day
had killed a mule-deer, an animal we were very anxious to obtain.
About eleven in the evening the wind shifted to the northwest,
and it began to rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning,
after which the wind changed to the southwest, and blew with such
violence that we were obliged to hold fast the canoes, for fear
of their being driven from the sand-bar: still, the cables of two
of them broke, and two others were blown quite across the river;
nor was it till two o'clock that the whole party were reassembled,
waiting in the rain for daylight."
The party now began to meet white men in small detachments
coming up the river. On the third of September, for example,
they met the first men who were able to give them news of home.
This party was commanded by a Mr. James Airs (or Ayres), from Mackinaw,
by the way of Prairie du Chien and St. Louis. He had two canoes
loaded with merchandise which he was taking up the river to trade
with the Indians. Among the items of news gathered from him,
according to the private journal of one of the Lewis and Clark party,
was that General James Wilkinson was now Governor of Louisiana Territory,
and was stationed at St. Louis.
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