This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

get near enough to the buffaloes. Only two were shot on the voyage, both by the captain, who was a remarkably good shot. We saw several bears, but we got only two of them. One of them I shot one evening after we had landed. It sat in a
tree, and I came up close to it before I shot. The other was shot in a hollow tree. We could see by the udder that it must have little ones, so we cut down the tree and found one a little bigger than a cat. We had nothing for it to eat
except its mother, but she seemed to taste pretty good. In a short time it got tame, and was as playful as a cat. We saw many Indian teepees which they move wherever they go. They are nothing but some staves stuck in the ground, tied together at the top, and then covered by deer or buffalo hides. It looks like a sugar loaf and is called a wigwam. The door is so small you can scarcely crawl into it. Inside there is nothing but some skins and hollow gourds. The ones who live high up the river have no guns, but use bows and arrows. Mostly Blackfoot Indians live up above and they are great enemies to the whites. Their burial place is staves set down like their huts, but without the robes. Inside is a platform	where the corpse is laid wrapped	in	fur skins.	I have
never seen them near	their towns.	Other places	they	bury their dead in the
ground.
At the mouth of the Osage River where we were camped one night we saw a beaver dam, but the beavers were all gone. Their houses looked like sugar loaves. They are built very neatly and securely, as smooth as the nicest wall. The dam was almost torn down. There was hardly enough left to show what hard work it must have been for these	small animals. At	last we	arrived in St.
Louis, having made the twenty-two	hundred miles	in forty-two	days. It seems
unreasonably fast, but the current	ran over six miles	and sometimes faster, so
it was not so strange. As soon as	we got there I	was	paid off.	I resolved to
go up the Ohio River	to Pittsburgh,	and then by	land	to	Baltimore	to get my
clothes, and then to	New Orleans.	I stayed one	week	in	the town,	then took
hire with the steamer "messenger" which was to go to Cincinnati. Just before I went aboard I had been to a smith to get two pistols he had fixed for me. I met a man I knew going to the	ship,	and for	fun aimed one at him. While I
stood thus, one came up back of	me and grabbed	the pistol.	I turned and saw it
was the sheriff, who very hardly commanded me to give him the other one, too. I did not feel inclined to give it up, and, as he put out his hand to take it from me, I hit him in the head	with	it so he	fell on the	street. I threw the
pistol down and ran like furies	were	behind me	down to the	ship which was just
about to sail. I jumped aboard, and have never been there since.
On the way we touched Louisville where we went through the canal, which is two miles long and has four locks, as the water falls in that distance two hundred feet. The canal is seldom used to go down the river, as ships can go down with the current. Between Louisville and Cincinnati we went by a so-called pigeon roost, a place where wild pigeons come every night by thousands. In the daytime you don't see a pigeon, only maybe one that is hurt in some way, but in the evening they come in flocks. They darken the air, and make a noise equal to Niagara Falls. They are smaller than our pigeons, but have very long tails.	Cincinnati	is a very beautiful town. A lot of trading is done, by
river with New Orleans, and overland with Baltimore and Philadelphia. From there I went as passenger to Wheeling about five hundred miles higher up, I intended to go by post chaise to Baltimore, three hundred miles further, but when I reached Wheeling I found it cost too much. So I resolved to walk, after sending my clothes with a pack wagon for six dollars.
28