348 LIFE OF AUDUBOJST. 



(3HAPTEE LVII. 



Excursion to the Great Western Prairies — Jbdediah Irish — Up the 

 MissotTRi — EivEB Pictures — Indians — Prairies — Bio Sioux River — 

 The Inundations— Indians everywhere — Deeper into the Wil- 

 derness — The Mandans — Indian Thieves — The " Medicine Lodge " — 

 Eecarbe Indians — ^Indian Council on Board — Fort Union — Arrival 

 at Yellow Stone River — Bupealo Hunt — Small-Pox amongt the 

 Indians — Return to New York. 



" March 11, 1843. Left New York this morning with my son 

 Victor, on an expedition to the Yellow-stone Eiver, and regions 

 adjacent and unknown, undertaken for the sake of our work 

 on the ' Quadrupeds of North America,' and arrived in Phila- 

 delphia 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 Gr. Bell, Isaac 

 Sprague, and Lewis Squires, were to accompany me on this 

 long campaign. The next morning we left for Baltimore, and 

 Victor returned home to Minnie's Land." 



There are four folio volumes of MS. containing a detailed 

 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. 



