The party reached St. Charles in the afternoon, but the harpies of the law looked in vain for their expected prey.  The boats resumed their course on the following morning, and had not proceeded far when Pierre Dorion made his appearance on the shore.  He was gladly taken on board, but he came without his squaw.  They had quarreled in the night; Pierre had administered the Indian discipline of the cudgel, whereupon she had taken to the woods, with their children and all their worldly goods.  Pierre evidently was deeply grieved and disconcerted at the loss of his wife and his knapsack, whereupon Mr. Hunt despatched one of the Canadian voyageurs in search of the fugitive; and the whole party, after proceeding a few miles further, encamped on an island to wait his return.  The Canadian rejoined the party, but without the squaw; and Pierre Dorion passed a solitary and anxious night, bitterly regretting his indiscretion in having exercised his conjugal authority so near home.  Before daybreak, however, a well-known voice reached his ears from the opposite shore.  It was his repentant spouse, who had been wandering the woods all night in quest of the party, and had at length descried it by its fires.  A boat was despatched for her, the interesting family was once more united, and Mr. Hunt now flattered himself that his perplexities with Pierre Dorion were at an end.

Bad weather, very heavy rains, and an unusually early rise in the Missouri, rendered the ascent of the river toilsome, slow, and dangerous.  The rise of the Missouri does not generally take place until the month of May or June:  the present swelling of the river must have been caused by a freshet in some of its more southern branches.  It could not have been the great annual flood, as the higher branches must still have been ice-bound.

And here we cannot but pause, to notice the admirable arrangement of nature, by which the annual swellings of the various great rivers which empty themselves into the Mississippi, have been made to precede each other at considerable intervals.  Thus, the flood of the Red River precedes that of the Arkansas by a month.  The Arkansas, also, rising in a much more southern latitude than the Missouri, takes the lead of it in its annual excess, and its superabundant waters are disgorged and disposed of long before the breaking up of the icy barriers of the north; otherwise, did all these mighty streams rise simultaneously, and discharge their vernal floods into the Mississippi, an inundation would be the consequence, that would submerge and devastate all the lower country.