Lewis: February 3, 1805
On a fine Sunday at Fort Mandan, the blacksmith resumed work and few Native visitors came by. The expedition's boat and pirogues remained dangerously frozen in layered ice covered with snow, with water rushing up between strata whenever the men chopped through. Attempts to free the vessels with axes failed, and a plan to use boiling water heated by hot stones also failed because the local calcareous rocks shattered in the fire. As a last resort, the men prepared iron spikes attached to poles, along with an elk-skin rope and windlass, to extract the boats.
3rd of February Sunday 1805. a fine day; the blacksmith again commences
his opperations. we were visited by but few of the natives today. the
situation of our boat and perogues is now allarming, they are firmly
inclosed in the Ice and almost covered with snow. The ice which incloses
them lyes in several stratas of unequal thicknesses which are seperated by
streams of water. this peculiarly unfortunate because so soon as we cut
through the first strata of ice the water rushes up and rises as high as
the upper surface of the ice and thus creates such a debth of water as
renders it impracticable to cut away the lower strata which appears firmly
attatched to, and confining the bottom of the vessels. the instruments we
have hitherto used has been the ax only, with which, we have made several
attempts that proved unsuccessful) from the cause above mentioned. we then
determined to attempt freeing them from the ice by means of boiling water
which we purposed heating in the vessels by means of hot stones, but this
expedient proved also fruitless, as every species of stone which we could
procure in the neighbourhood partook so much of the calcarious genus that
they burst into small particles on being exposed to the heat of the fire.
we now determined as the dernier resort to prepare a parse) of Iron spikes
and attatch them to the end of small poles of convenient length and
endeavour by means of them to free the vessels from the ice. we have
already prepared a large rope of Elk-skin and a windless by means of which
we have no doubt of being able to draw the boat on the bank provided we
can free from the ice.
Read this entry in modern English AI-translated
3rd of February, Sunday 1805. A fine day; the blacksmith again starts his operations. We were visited by only a few of the natives today. The situation of our boat and pirogues is now alarming; they are firmly enclosed in the ice and almost covered with snow. The ice which encloses them lies in several layers of unequal thickness which are separated by streams of water. This is peculiarly unfortunate because as soon as we cut through the first layer of ice, the water rushes up and rises as high as the upper surface of the ice, and thus creates such a depth of water as renders it impracticable to cut away the lower layer, which appears firmly attached to, and confining, the bottom of the vessels.
The only instrument we have used so far has been the ax, with which we have made several attempts that proved unsuccessful, for the cause mentioned above. We then determined to attempt freeing them from the ice by means of boiling water, which we proposed to heat in the vessels by means of hot stones, but this expedient also proved fruitless, as every kind of stone we could find in the neighborhood was so calcareous in nature that the stones burst into small particles when exposed to the heat of the fire.
We now decided, as a last resort, to prepare a number of iron spikes and attach them to the ends of small poles of convenient length, and try by means of them to free the vessels from the ice. We have already prepared a large rope of elk-skin and a windlass, by means of which we have no doubt of being able to draw the boat onto the bank, provided we can free it from the ice.
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