Of these they had a
thousand inquiries to make concerning all affairs, foreign and
domestic, during their year of sepulture in the wilderness; and
especially about the events of the existing war.
They now prepared to abandon their weary travel by land, and to
embark upon the water. A bargain was made with Mr. Dornin, who
engaged to furnish them with a canoe and provisions for the
voyage, in exchange for their venerable and well-tried fellow
traveller, the old Snake horse.
Accordingly, in a couple of days, the Indians employed by that
gentleman constructed for them a canoe twenty feet long, four
feet wide, and eighteen inches deep. The frame was of poles and
willow twigs, on which were stretched five elk and buffalo hides,
sewed together with sinews, and the seams payed with unctuous
mud. In this they embarked at an early hour on the 16th of April,
and drifted down ten miles with the stream, when the wind being
high they encamped, and set to work to make oars, which they had
not been able to procure at the Indian village.
Once more afloat, they went merrily down the stream, and after
making thirty-five miles, emerged into the broad turbid current
of the Missouri. Here they were borne along briskly by the rapid
stream; though, by the time their fragile bark had floated a
couple of hundred miles, its frame began to show the effects of
the voyage.
