“Some few days after this one of his assistants called to me to show me a painting that Mr. Audubon had finished that morning. This was after dinner, as Mr. Audubon had always to retire to his stateroom after that meal and have his long afternoon nap. The assistant took advantage of this opportunity to show me some of the drawings which Mr. Audubon was opposed to our seeing. On entering the room I saw the drawing of the squirrel just finished, and certainly I never saw anything representing life so strikingly. The assistant then told me that Mr. Audubon had remarked that it was the best specimen of a black squirrel that he had ever painted.”
THE OVER-WISE BOTANIST.
A KERNEL OF CORN.
The crew soon lost a good deal of the deference and respect which were justly due to individuals of such scientific attainments as were those of the Audubon party; and it is to be feared that they played pranks on them now and then which they would have avoided with people of more congenial manner. Etienne Provost was serving as guide to the party. No one in that day knew the Western country better than he, and he was quite astonished when Mr. Prou, Audubon’s botanist, said to him one day that he could tell the name of any plant in that country from the leaf and stalk, even if he had never seen it growing. “You may think so,” said Provost, “but I will undertake to prove that you are mistaken; for I know a plant that grows in this country whose name you will not be able to tell, even with the aid of your books.” Soon afterward the boat landed to take on wood near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. A band of Indians had spent the previous winter near by and had dropped some of their corn on the ground. This was now well sprouted and the tender blades were just shooting up. Provost carefully cut the ground around a spear of the corn so as not to disturb the roots or the kernel, which was still attached thereto. He deftly concealed everything except one leaf and then showed it to Mr. Prou. The eager scientist was looking for some test of a formidable character, and anything like corn did not even occur to him. It is doubtful if he realized at the time that corn was grown in that country. He racked his brain for a plant that he could identify with the specimen. He grew nervous under the scrutiny of the on-lookers that had gathered around him. Taking his book, he searched back and forth, but to no purpose. It was indeed a new species, and he finally acknowledged himself beaten. Provost then, with provoking gravity, pulled away the dirt around the roots and finally disclosed to the astonished scientist—a kernel of corn.
Above Omaha the boat made its way with more than usual speed and good luck to its destination. It reached Fort Pierre May 31 and Fort Union at sundown June 12. It left Fort Union June 14, reached Pierre June 21, and St. Louis June 29. The time consumed was forty-nine days from St. Louis to Fort Union and seventeen days returning. Mr. Audubon and party remained at Fort Union until autumn, returning in a mackinaw boat.
CHAPTER XIII.
VOYAGE OF 1844.
A POPULAR FALLACY.
In the winter of 1843–44 the American Fur Company built a new boat, the Nimrod, designed to correct certain defects in the Omega, and in this boat the voyage of 1844 was made. As in the previous year, Captains Sire and La Barge were master and pilot. It was in the spring and summer of this year that occurred the great flood of 1844. This appears to have been the greatest flood in the lower Missouri and central Mississippi ever known before or since. The entire bottoms in the vicinity of St. Louis were covered with water to a width of several miles. The flood had the curious effect of completely filling up the old bed of the river, so that, when it subsided, the river had to cut out a new channel, and it was many years before the channel was restored to its condition before the flood. The high water lasted far into the summer. When Captain La Barge returned from his trip to Fort Union he ran his boat up Washington Avenue to Commercial Alley, where he made her fast through a window in J. E. Walsh’s warehouse at the corner of those streets. This great flood was mostly from the lower country, and scarcely at all from the mountains. When the Nimrod reached the Omaha villages, a short distance below the modern site of Sioux City, Ia., she found the water so low that she was compelled to wait several days for a rise. This fact is a noteworthy one, as another refutation of the popular idea that floods in the Mississippi have their origin in the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains. As a matter of fact they always come from the heavy rains of the lower country.
The Nimrod passenger list, like that of the Omega the year before, included some notable names. Among these were the Comte d’Otrante, son of the famous Fouché of France, and another Frenchman, the Comte de Peindry. D’Otrante was much liked by the crew. He was an accomplished gentleman, very wealthy, and had with him a retinue of servants who had been reared with him upon the ancestral domain in France. He was making the present journey solely for the purpose of pleasure. De Peindry was a different sort of man. He and d’Otrante met by accident on this trip and had little to do with each other. It was noted that de Peindry treated his compatriot with great deference and respect as being his superior. He was silent and impenetrable, and spent much of his time hunting. When leaving the boat on these hunts he would give directions not to wait for him if he did not return. He was repeatedly cautioned that the boat could not wait for him, but his invariable reply was: “Do not wait; I will turn up; if I do not, it is no matter.” He caused a great deal of uneasiness on several occasions by not getting back in time, and Captain Sire in his journal comments severely upon his conduct. He was said to be a noted duelist, who, for some unknown cause, had been compelled to leave Paris. He was very much of an enigma to the passengers of the Nimrod. In 1845 he went to California, whence the report came a few years later that he had been assassinated.