On the afternoon of April 18, the Yellow Stone encountered a stretch of water so densely packed with snags that it could proceed no further under its own power. Maximilian recorded in his journal for this day, "Again we lay still for a long time, fathomed and cut off dangerous trees, then 26 men were put on a sandbank on the left to pull the steamboat." At around two o'clock the,steamer was under way, but again ran aground in less than half an hour on a large sandbank. Here it remained overnight.

In navigating upstream on the lower Mississippi, steamer craft customarily kept close to the banks in order to avoid the intense current. This subjected such vessels to the dangers of encountering driftwood along the banks. Bodmer related that often the paddlewheels were broken as a result of contact with snags and sunken logs. His watercolor sketch of the Mississippi steamer Delphine was made near Baton Rouge the latter part of January, 1833.

A few miles below Mount Vernon stood the village of Shawnee Town. Maximilian described it as "a dead, sad place" when he traveled this section of the Ohio en route to St. Louis in March, 1833 . About twenty-five miles beyond lay an unusual geological feature known as Cave-In-Rock on the Illinois side of the river near Cave-In-Rock Island, today within a state park.

Bodmer sketched various types of vessels on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers during his voyage to New Orleans in January, 1833. His detailed small study of a keelboat on the Ohio depicts one of the more common craft used at that time for transporting river cargo. Keelboats, flatboats, sailboats, and canoes were in use on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.

Frequent stops were made by Ohio river craft to load or unload passengers and cargo and pick up cordwood for fuel. At such times Bodmer often went ashore to make studies of the river, its settlements, and its bustling commercial life. His diagram of the deck plan of the Homer, if lacking in picturesque detail, furnishes information about the usual riverboat accommodations of that day. As indicated in the drawing, passengers were housed above deck, the stores and cargo below.

Just after midnight on January 3, 1833, the Misssissippi steamer Homer arrived at Mount Vernon. Bodmer embarked upon it the following morning for New Orleans. During the next several weeks, he produced numerous studies of the scenery and settlements along the lower Ohio and Mississippi. Most of these are reproduced here for the first time. Bodmer's undated sketch of the Homer may have been made at any one of the stops along the course of his travels downriver.