Rock Formations on the Upper Missouri

Description

On the morning of July 6 Maximilian's company departed upriver from Fort Union for Fort McKenzie on the Flora, a sixty-foot keelboat captained by David Mitchell, company manager for Fort McKenzie. Fifty-two passengers embarked including Maximilian, Bodmer, Dreidoppel, Mitchell, and Mitchell's Indian wife, one of two women on board. In his journal Maximilian subsequently mentioned a number of sketches made by Bodmer during the course of this voyage. An entry for July 7 mentions a view designated by the letter A describing strangely weathered bluffs on the Missouri a few miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. Lacking wind for its sail, the keelboat was hauled forward at this point by members of the crew using large hawsers called cordelles. Maximilian reported that the towing party "was obliged to climb in a long row up the hills, where we saw them suspended, like chamois, in dangerous positions."