We did not run far; the weather was still bad, raining hard, and at ten o'clock, with wood nearly exhausted, we stopped on the west shore, and there remained all the night, cleaning boilers, etc.
Sunday 30th. This morning was cold, and it blew a gale from the north. We started, however, for a wooding-place, but the "John Auld" had the advantage of us, and took what there was; the wind increased so much that the waves were actually running pretty high down-stream, and we stopped until one o'clock. You may depend my party was not sorry for this; and as I had had no exercise since we left St. Louis, as soon as breakfast was over we started—Bell, Harris, Squires, and myself, with our guns—and had quite a frolic of it, for we killed a good deal of game, and lost some. Unfortunately we landed at a place where the water had overflowed the country between the shores and the hills, which are distant about one mile and a half. We started a couple of Deer, which Bell and I shot at, and a female Turkey flying fast; at my shot it extended its legs downwards as if badly wounded, but it sailed on, and must have fallen across the muddy waters. Bell, Harris, and myself shot running exactly twenty-eight Rabbits, Lepus sylvaticus, and two Bachmans, two Sciurus macrourus of Say, two Arctomys monax, and a pair of Tetrao [Bonasa] umbellus. The woods were alive with the Rabbits, but they were very wild; the Ground-hogs, Marmots, or Arctomys, were in great numbers, judging from the innumerable burrows we saw, and had the weather been calm, I have no doubt we would have seen many more. Bell wounded a Turkey hen so badly that the poor thing could not fly; but Harris frightened it, and it was off, and was lost. Harris shot an Arctomys without pouches, that had been forced out of its burrow by the water entering it; it stood motionless until he was within ten paces of it; when, ascertaining what it was, he retired a few yards, and shot it with No. 10 shot,
