Below Wheeling, WV When Dr. Patterson fails to appear by 3pm, so Lewis decides to head down the Ohio without him. Fellow river traveler Thomas Rodney is there to say goodbye. During the night, it rains so hard that Lewis is unable to keep the cargo dry.
Our Barge at Rest
10″ x 6″ oil on board
© 2009 by Charles Fritz. Used by permission. Originally titled “Our Keelboat at Rest.”
Waiting for the Doctor
The Dr. could not get ready I waited untill thre this evening and then set out had some difficulty in geting over a riffle one mile below the town, got on six miles and brought too
—Meriwether Lewis
Rodney Bids Farewell
Just after diner Captain Lewis called on me to bid me farewell. The Major, Shields, and I went down and took a parting drink and part of a water Mellon on board his boat and then bid him adieu and stayed on shore to see him depart, and I waited till I saw him over the first ripple.
—Thomas Rodney[1]9 September 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
Rodney Predicts Delays
Captain Lewes is a stout young man but not so robust as to look able to fully accomplish the object of his mission, nor does he seem to set out in the manner that promises a fulfilment of it. He sits out in a vessel 56 feet long and completely equipped with sails and 18 oars, with as many soldiers and riverman as are necessary to man her . . . . His vessel fitted with very nice and comfortable accommodations with great stores of baggage and cargo so that she draws 2½ feet water and will be very heavy to go up against the stream of the Misisipi and other rivers. This will be the cause of great delay . . . .
—Thomas Rodney[2]Ibid., 52.
