Day-by-Day / October 13, 1803

October 13, 1803

Headwinds

Six Mile Island, KY[1]No known record exists of Lewis’s travel between Big Bone Lick and Louisville. We do know that he had left Big Bone Lick before Thomas Rodney arrived there on 10 October and that he arrived at … Continue reading On or near this date, Lewis encounters several islands named for their distance from Louisville. Here, giant cane begins to appear on the Ohio shores. Just a day or two behind Lewis, contemporary traveler Thomas Rodney complains about the constant headwinds on this part of the Ohio River.

Giant Cane

Arundinaria gigantea

Plant with stalk and long thin leaves

Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Constant Headwinds

[S]et down to row ten miles to forward us to Louisville; but the breaze is fresh and still head as usual, tho we expected a change yesterday and day before.

We all got at the oars after breakfast and turned a point ahead and came in view of another island; but it blew so hard ahead we could not git along.
—Thomas Rodney[2]14 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), … Continue reading

Giant Cane

We went on shore about midway of the last island to see the cane, or reed, growing, for here we met with the first of it; but it is small, growing only ten or 12 ft. high.
—Thomas Rodney[3]Ibid. 15 October 1803, 120.

Related: Plants of the Expedition

Six Mile Island

I met a man and a boy on the island tho it is now uninhabited. The man told me it . . . is called 6 Mile Island being 6 miles from Louisville. We saw Louisville at six miles distance on the Kentucky shore.
—Thomas Rodney[4]Ibid.

 

Notes

Notes
↑1 No known record exists of Lewis’s travel between Big Bone Lick and Louisville. We do know that he had left Big Bone Lick before Thomas Rodney arrived there on 10 October and that he arrived at the Falls of the Ohio on 14 October. Stopping here would enable him to make Louisville at a reasonable time of day despite the headwinds reported by Rodney.
↑2 14 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 118–119.
↑3 Ibid. 15 October 1803, 120.
↑4 Ibid.

Discover More

  • The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
  • The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.

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Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).