Dated November 21 1832, is this sketch of the banks on Saline Creek, a tributary of the Ohio. Maximilian recorded on this day that Bodmer made drawings "at home," later went walking in the woods, and in the afternoon paid a visit to a local whiskey factory to view its steam engine. Maximilian's journal makes no further mention of Bodmer's activities at this time, but it may be supposed that he made the sketch during an afternoon stroll along Saline Creek.

Bodmer's dramatic representations of the forested banks of the Fox and Wabash rivers reveal a love of nature that increasingly characterized his later career as a landscape painter in Europe. According to Maximilian, the artist did not often complete such scenes in a single sitting, but usually returned several times to a selected site. The results thus obtained more nearly resemble studio works than the hasty sketches made while traveling the wilderness, roads, or the river.

During the months of November and December, while Maximilian recovered at New Harmony, Bodmer and Dreidoppel went almost daily to explore along the Fox and Wabash rivers in search of zoological specimens. According to an entry in his journal on December 6, Maximilian himself accompanied Bodmer on an excursion by boat to Fox Island at the mouth of the Fox River. On that day, Mr. Bodmer made a drawing from an interesting landscape, the estuary of the Fox River into the Wabash.This rendering of the scene was reproduced as Tableau 5 in the atlas of aquatints published in Europe in 1839-43.

The travelers arrived at Mount Vernon, Indiana, at twilight on October 18. The next morning Maximilian hired a wagon for the transportation of luggage and set out for the village of New Harmony, located some fifteen miles north. Dreidoppel accompanied the Prince while Bodmer and a recent acquaintance from the boat started out for New Harmony on foot. During the weeks that followed, Bodmer made numerous studies in and around New Harmony, including this unfinished view of the settlement as seen from a distance.

On the morning of October 18 the Water Witch weighed anchor and continued downriver. In his journal Maximilian wrote that "in spite of the low water level, the Ohio is very wide and beautiful." Bodmer's sketch of the rocky shoreline in the vicinity of Rockport, Indiana, was made before breakfast this same morning and serves to illustrate the descriptions in Maximilian's journal of unusual rock formations observed along the Ohio.

On October 17 the Water Witch approached the settlement of Rome, Indiana, opposite Cloverburg, Kentucky. In the afternoon it anchored at Stevensport below Rome, where Bodmer made two watercolor studies of the river.

Traveling downriver from Portland, Maximilian and his party went ashore briefly when the steamer docked at Albany to repair its engines. Bodmer shot a few birds at this time and Dreidoppel dutifully prepared them as specimens for Maximilian's zoological collection. Bodmer's sketch of the Ohio reproduced here is undated; it might have been done at any time during the course of the voyage downriver.