Page:Audubon and His Journals.djvu/506

450 As the only account of the journey from New York to St. Louis which can now be found is contained in a letter to my uncle Mr. James Hall, dated St. Louis, March 29, 1843, the following extract is given:—

"The weather has been bad ever since we left Baltimore. There we encountered a snow-storm that accompanied us all the way to this very spot, and at this moment the country is whitened with this precious, semi-congealed, heavenly dew. As to ice!—I wish it were all in your icehouse when summer does come, should summer show her bright features in the year of our Lord 1843. We first encountered ice at Wheeling, and it has floated down the Ohio all around us, as well as up the Mississippi to pleasant St. Louis. And such a steamer as we have come in from Louisville here!—the very filthiest of all filthy old rat-traps I ever travelled in; and the fare worse, certainly much worse, and so scanty withal that our worthy commander could not have given us another meal had we been detained a night longer. I wrote a famous long letter to my Lucy on the subject, and as I know you will hear it, will not repeat the account of our situation on board the 'Gallant'—a pretty name, too, but alas! her name, like mine, is only a shadow, for as she struck a sawyer one night we all ran like mad to make ready to leap overboard; but as God would have it, our lives and the 'Gallant,' were spared—she from sinking, and we from swimming amid rolling and crashing hard ice. screamed, the babies squalled, the dogs yelled, the steam roared, the captain (who, by the way, is a very gallant