ARRIVAL AT ST. PIERRE. 355 



three and a half feet of water, and the captain gave orders to 

 ' tie up,' and we started on a walk for St. Pierre. On reaching 

 the camp, we found it a strongly-built low log-eabin, in which 

 was a Mr. Cutting, who had met my son Victor in Cuba. 

 Yesterday, while he was on a buffalo-hunt, a cow hooked his 

 horse, and threw him about twenty feet, and injured his ankle. 

 This he thought remarkable, as the cow had not been wounded. 

 He showed me a petrified head of a wolf, which I discovered to 

 be not a wolfs but a beaver's. There were fifteen lodges here, 

 and a great number of squaws and half-bred children ; and these 

 are accounted for by the fact that every clerk and agent has 

 his Indian wife as she is called."'^ j 



June 1. The party had arrived at St. Pierre, and from thence 

 the Omega, in which they had made their trip, was expected to 

 return to St. Louis. The Journal continues : " I am somewhat 

 surprised that Sprague asked me to allow him to return in the 

 Omega. I told him he was at liberty to do so of course if be 

 desired it, though it will cause me double the labour I expected 

 to have. Had I known this before leaving New York, I could 

 have had any number of young artists, who would have been 

 glad to have accompanied and remained with me to the end of 

 the expedition. 



" June 2. We have left St. Pierre and are going on up the 

 river, deeper and deeper into the wilderness. We passed the 

 Chagenne Eiver, which is quite a large stream." 



Audubon hired a hunter named Alexis Bouibarde at St. Pierre 

 to accompany him to the Yellow-stone Eiver, and thus describes 

 him : " He is a first-rate hunter, powerfully built, is a half-breed, 

 and wears his hair loose about his head and shoulders, as I 

 formerly did. . . ." 



" I am now astonished at the poverty of the bluffs we pass : 

 there are no more of the beautiful limestone formations which 

 we saw below, but they all appear to be poor and crumbling 

 clay, dry and hard now, but soft and sticky whenever it rains. 

 The cedars in the ravines, which below were fine and thrifty, are 

 generally dead or dying, probably owing to their long inun- 

 dation. To-day we have made sixty miles ; the country is much 

 poorer than any we have passed below, and the sand-bars are 

 much more intricate. 



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