Bodmer made several drawings at the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi on one or another of his voyages downriver from New Harmony. This sketch may have been done when he first descended the Ohio en route to New Orleans in January 1833, or when he followed the same route with Maximilian two months later.

Approximately twenty-five miles below Cave-In-Rock lay Golconda Island, and beyond it the settlement of Smithland at the mouth of the Cumberland River. Passing by in March, 1833, Maximilian described the Cumberland as smaller than the Wabash and Smithland itself as similar to the small Brazilian villages he had seen on his travels in South America more than ten years before. Bodmer's sketch of an Ohio steamer, identified by its inscription as having been observed near Smithland, appears to have served as the model for the riverboat illustrated in Vignette VII of the aquatint series.

On October 8, Maximilian's party left Pittsburgh by stage for Wheeling, now in West Virginia. The next day they boarded an Ohio steamer there and four days later arrived at Cincinnati. The presence of cholera in the area discouraged plans for a visit into the city, and Maximilian regretted that he would not have the opportunity of seeing its museum of natural history. Bodmer's shipboard study of the Ohio River near Cincinnati, identified by a brief inscription at lower right, was made on the morning of their arrival.

With stopovers at Huntington and Ebensburg, where they stayed several days waiting for Bodmer and Saynisch to catch up with them, Maximilian and Dreidoppel reached Pittsburgh around midnight on September 26. Securing accommodations at the Exchange Hotel, they were soon joined there by Bodmer and Saynisch.