Meriwether Lewis: September 9, 1803

9^th Sep^t

The D^r could not get ready I waited untill thre[e] this evening and then set out had some difficulty in geting over a riffle one mile below the town, got on six miles and brought too, I was now informed that by some mistake in the contract between the Corporal and the woman who had engaged to bake the bread for the men at Wheeling that the woman would not agree to give up the bread being 90 lbs. and that the bread was left I instantly dispatched the Corpo^l and two men for the bread and gave him a dollar to pay the woman for her trouble; about the time we landed it began to rain very heard and continued to rain most powerfully all night with small intervals; had my perogues covered with oil-cloth, but the rain comes down in such torrents that I found it necessary to have them bailed out freequently in the course of the night; in attending to the security of my goods I was exposed to the rain and got wet to the skin as I remained untill about twelve at night, when I wrung out my saturated cloths, put on a dry shirt turned into my birth; the rain was exceessively could for the season of the year.

Source: Lewis’s 1803 journal, printed in Quaife, The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Sergeant John Ordway (Wisconsin Historical Society, 1916), p. 40. Public domain.