Friday, 25th. Remained encamped in order to give the hunters an opportunity to procure some game. We had nothing for breakfast or dinner, and as our meals a few days past had been few and slight, we have become impatient under the pressure of hunger; a few fresh-water muscles (unio), two or three small fishes, and a tortoise which had been found in the mud of the ravine, were roasted and eaten, without that essential condiment salt, of which we had been for some time destitute. The hunters so anxiously looked for at length returned, bringing but three ducks (anas sponsa); one of them had shot down three deer, but they all escaped.
As we have no idea of our distance from Belle Point, and know not what extent of country we are doomed to traverse in the state of privation to which { 92} we have of late been subjected, we have selected, from our miserable horses, an individual to be slaughtered for food, in case of extremity of abstinence; and upon which, although very lean, we cannot forbear to cast an occasional wishful glance.
Bijeau, before he parted from us, urged by his wishes for our safety, drew for our information a sketch of the country over which we had to pass, as far as he had travelled in that direction on a former occasion, which sketch was terminated by two large streams entering the river near to each other, and diverging in the opposite direction. As the remarkable relative course of these two streams, as represented by Bijeau, corresponded to sufficient exactness with the representation of the Verdigrise and Grand rivers, which terminated a sketch which Major Long drew to depict the country from Belle Point upwards, we believed that by joining the two sketches we had a complete view of the country before us, as far as the settlements. Bijeau's sketch proved to be a pretty faithful transcript of the country, as far as the two watercourses that we passed on the 18th instant; which, as they terminated his map, we then supposed were, of course, the Verdigrise and Grand rivers. But not being able to recognise in Major Long's draft one single feature of the region we have since traversed, we finally concluded, either that we had not yet arrived at the true Verdigrise river, or that we had passed by our place of destination without perceiving it. In this state of uncertainty it was determined to continue our course with as much speed as the exhausted situation of our horses would permit, with the hope of soon arriving at some settlement, where we might obtain the proper direction.