Mr. Hunt Had Offered
Them The Protection And Facilities Of His Party, In Their
Scientific Research Up The Missouri River.
As they were not ready
to depart at the moment of embarkation, they put their trunks on
board of
The boat, but remained at St. Louis until the next day,
for the arrival of the post, intending to join the expedition at
St. Charles, a short distance above the mouth of the Missouri.
The same evening, however, they learned that a writ had been
issued against Pierre Dorion for his whiskey debt, by Mr. Lisa,
as agent of the Missouri Company, and that it was the intention
to entrap the mongrel linguist on his arrival at St. Charles.
Upon hearing this, Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Nuttall set off a little
after midnight, by land, got ahead of the boat as it was
ascending the Missouri, before its arrival at St. Charles, and
gave Pierre Dorion warning of the legal toil prepared to ensnare
him.
The knowing Pierre immediately landed and took to the woods,
followed by his squaw laden with their papooses, and a large
bundle containing their most precious effects, promising to
rejoin the party some distance above St. Charles. There seemed
little dependence to be placed upon the promises of a loose
adventurer of the kind, who was at the very time playing an
evasive game with his former employers; who had already received
two-thirds of his year's pay, and his rifle on his shoulder, his
family and worldly fortunes at his heels, and the wild woods
before him. There was no alternative, however, and it was hoped
his pique against his old employers would render him faithful to
his new ones.
The party reached St. Charles in the afternoon, but the harpies
of the law looked in vain for their expected prey. The boats
resumed their course on the following morning, and had not
proceeded far when Pierre Dorion made his appearance on the
shore. He was gladly taken on board, but he came without his
squaw. They had quarreled in the night; Pierre had administered
the Indian discipline of the cudgel, whereupon she had taken to
the woods, with their children and all their worldly goods.
Pierre evidently was deeply grieved and disconcerted at the loss
of his wife and his knapsack, whereupon Mr. Hunt despatched one
of the Canadian voyageurs in search of the fugitive; and the
whole party, after proceeding a few miles further, encamped on an
island to wait his return. The Canadian rejoined the party, but
without the squaw; and Pierre Dorion passed a solitary and
anxious night, bitterly regretting his indiscretion in having
exercised his conjugal authority so near home. Before daybreak,
however, a well-known voice reached his ears from the opposite
shore. It was his repentant spouse, who had been wandering the
woods all night in quest of the party, and had at length descried
it by its fires. A boat was despatched for her, the interesting
family was once more united, and Mr. Hunt now flattered himself
that his perplexities with Pierre Dorion were at an end.
Bad weather, very heavy rains, and an unusually early rise in the
Missouri, rendered the ascent of the river toilsome, slow, and
dangerous. The rise of the Missouri does not generally take place
until the month of May or June: the present swelling of the river
must have been caused by a freshet in some of its more southern
branches. It could not have been the great annual flood, as the
higher branches must still have been ice-bound.
And here we cannot but pause, to notice the admirable arrangement
of nature, by which the annual swellings of the various great
rivers which empty themselves into the Mississippi, have been
made to precede each other at considerable intervals. Thus, the
flood of the Red River precedes that of the Arkansas by a month.
The Arkansas, also, rising in a much more southern latitude than
the Missouri, takes the lead of it in its annual excess, and its
superabundant waters are disgorged and disposed of long before
the breaking up of the icy barriers of the north; otherwise, did
all these mighty streams rise simultaneously, and discharge their
vernal floods into the Mississippi, an inundation would be the
consequence, that would submerge and devastate all the lower
country.
On the afternoon of the third day, January, 17th, the boats
touched at Charette, one of the old villages founded by the
original French colonists. Here they met with Daniel Boone, the
renowned patriarch of Kentucky, who had kept in the advance of
civilization, and on the borders of the wilderness, still leading
a hunter's life, though now in his eighty-fifth year. He had but
recently returned from a hunting and trapping expedition, and had
brought nearly sixty beaver skins as trophies of his skill. The
old man was still erect in form, strong in limb, and unflinching
in spirit, and as he stood on the river bank, watching the
departure of an expedition destined to traverse the wilderness to
the very shores of the Pacific, very probably felt a throb of his
old pioneer spirit, impelling him to shoulder his rifle and join
the adventurous band. Boone flourished several years after this
meeting, in a vigorous old age, the Nestor of hunters and
backwoodsmen; and died, full of sylvan honor and renown, in 1818,
in his ninety-second year.
The next morning early, as the party were yet encamped at the
mouth of a small stream, they were visited by another of these
heroes of the wilderness, one John Colter, who had accompanied
Lewis and Clarke in their memorable expedition. He had recently
made one of those vast internal voyages so characteristic of this
fearless class of men, and of the immense regions over which they
hold their lonely wanderings; having come from the head waters of
the Missouri to St. Louis in a small canoe. This distance of
three thousand miles he had accomplished in thirty days.
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