CHAPTER XXXV. 



Excursion to the Great Western Prairies Up the MissouriRevet 

 Pictures Indians The Mandans The "Medicine Lodge" 

 Ricaree Indians Fort Union Arrival at Yellow Stone River 

 Buffalo Hunt Small-Pox among the Indians Return to Nev> 

 York. 



\ARCHii., 1843. Left New York this morning 

 with my son Victor, on an expedition to the Yel- 

 low-stone River, and regions adjacent and un- 

 known, undertaken for the sake of our work on the ' Quad- 

 rupeds of North America,' and arrived in Philadelphia 

 late in the evening. 



" As we landed, a tall, robust-looking man, tapped me 

 on the shoulder, whom I discovered in the dim darkness 

 to be my friend, Jedediah Irish, of the Great Pine Swamp. 

 I also met my friend, Edward Harris, who, besides John 

 G. Bell, Isaac Sprague, and Lewis Squires, were to ac- 

 company me on this long campaign. The next morning 

 we left for Baltimore, and Victor returned home to Min- 

 nie's Land." 



There are four folio volumes of MS. containing a de- 

 tailed account of that whole journey, which lasted about 

 eight months. But as most of the journals were inwoven 

 into the three volumes on the " Quadrupeds of North 

 America," which were published in the years 1846, 1851, 

 and 1854, we give but an outline of the journey, and the 

 gleanings of such incidents as were not used in those 

 volumes. 



Audubon and his party crossed the Alleghany Moun- 

 18* 



