Near Maysville, Kentucky[1]Because we have no journal entry from Lewis for this day, his exact location is unknown. He was at Letart Falls on 18 September and arrived in Cincinnati on 28 September. Based on Thomas … Continue reading On or near this date, Lewis travels in the area between present-day Portsmouth, Ohio and Maysville, Kentucky. Contemporary traveler Thomas Rodney describes the rapids, fish, and hills in this area.
Floating Down the River
From an old print
From On the Trail of the Pioneers, John T. Faris, 1920.[2]Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County. On the Trail of the Pioneers by John T. Faris (1955), 17.
More Danger
Just time enough to pass over a dangerous riffle before us. The best channel was on the Kentucky shore but we followed Wood and crossed short over the middle of the riffle in the middle of the river. They rubbed hard and we just touched as we passed over.
—Thomas Rodney[3]1 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), 92.
River Carpsucker
Carpiodes carpio
Duane Raver, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Ohio Sucker
Wood gave us an Ohio sucker which we had for diner boiled and butter with it and found it a good fish. It was remarkably fat. Before cooking we took near at [a] pint tin cup of leaf fat out of it which lay all along its back interior. It would have weighed as we suppose about six pounds. It was in shape or form like a fatback and in color like a yellow perch. It lives by suction on muscles, etc.
—Thomas Rodney[4]Ibid., 93.
The Hills Resume
[T]he mountains have appeared on both shores for two days past, and thereby spoiled our wind so that we have had but little sailing.
—Thomas Rodney[6]Ibid.
Notes
| ↑1 | Because we have no journal entry from Lewis for this day, his exact location is unknown. He was at Letart Falls on 18 September and arrived in Cincinnati on 28 September. Based on Thomas Rodney’s journal of his similar trip down the Ohio and Cramer’s 1802 river guide, The Navigator, one conjecture is that Lewis stopped for the day before or at Maysville. Maysville would have been a good place for Lewis to spend a day and extra night. |
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| ↑2 | Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County. On the Trail of the Pioneers by John T. Faris (1955), 17. |
| ↑3 | 1 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), 92. |
| ↑4 | Ibid., 93. |
| ↑5 | David S. Jordan and Barton W. Everman, The Fishes of North and Middle America: A descriptive catalogue of the species of fish-like vertebrates found in the waters of North America, north of the Isthmus of Panama (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1896), 166. |
| ↑6 | Ibid. |
