Once again, pea soup fog delays departure, but this time, Lewis confirms his theory that the fog rises when the Ohio River water is warmer than the surrounding air. After departure, they stop at Fort MacIntosh near Beaver, Ohio, and discharge one of the crew. Lewis is encouraged when learning that the Ohio River becomes deeper 24 miles down. Slowed by two riffles, they only make six miles today.
Lewis’s Scientific Experiment
Verry foggy this morning. Thermometer 63° Ferrenheit, immersed the Thermometer in the river, and the murcury arose immediately to 75° or summer heat so that there is 12° difference is sufficient to shew the vapor which arrises from the water; the fogg this prodused is impenetrably thick at this moment; we were in consequence obliged to ly by untill 9 this morning
—Meriwether Lewis
A Discharge at Fort McIntosh
Fort McIntosh
Site of the Town of Beaver
Unknown artist. From Clarence M. Busch, Report of the Commission to Locate the Site of the Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania (State Printer of Pennsylvania, 1896), 484–485.
we set out at 9 this morning and passed a riffle just below us called Atkins’s got over with tolerable ease passed the mouth of big bever creek and came to ancor off Mackintosh being 2½ miles— discharge one of my hands.—
—Meriwether Lewis
Perched on a steep bank of the Ohio, Fort McIntosh overlooked the northernmost reach of the Ohio River. The Treaty of Fort McIntosh (1785) forced the Lenape Delawares to cede their Pennsylvania lands to the Commonwealth and established the first boundary in the Northwest. One of the commissioners representing the United States was William Clark’s older brother, George Rogers Clark.
Encouraging News
Mr. Gui Briant arrived with two boats loaded with firrs, he informs me that if I can reach, and get over the George-town barr 24 miles I can get on; this is some consolation.
—Meriwether Lewis
The Worst Riffle Yet
passed the riffle below Mackintosh.— about three miles from this we stuck on another riffle the worst I think we have yet passed were obliged to unload and drag over with horses.— staid all night having made only six miles.—
—Meriwether Lewis
Experience the Lewis and Clark Trail
The Lewis and Clark Trail Experience—our sister site at lewisandclark.travel—connects the world to people and places on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Plan a trip related to September 3, 1803:
- Fort McIntosh (Beaver, Pennsylvania)
Notes
| ↑1 | Moulton, Journals, 2:70n1. |
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