Note 195 — Chapter XXIV · DESCRIPTION OF FORT CLARKE AND THE ENVIRONS

In the first and greatest (Charbonneau did not remember in what year it occurred) the water rose forty feet above its usual level. Only the tops of the poplars were to be seen, and the ice lay above a month on the land, till it was melted by the sun. The second inundation took place on the 6th of April, 1826; the water rose, at daybreak, so rapidly and so high, that Charbonneau was compelled to escape, with some of his property, to the middle Manitari village, two miles from the Missouri, and to take refuge on a stack of maize, where he passed three days without fire, in a cold north wind, and drifting snow. The water rose twenty-five feet above its usual level. The inhabitants of fifteen tents of the Sioux, below the Sêche (near the Grand River, below the Arikkara villages), were all drowned. In the wooded point of land, at the mouth of the Chayenne River, lived a man named Pascal Seré, who traded with the Sioux. The water rising rapidly, he took refuge, with his goods, on the roof of his house, which, however, was, ere long, lifted up by the river and carried a good way down the stream. At this place the ice had formed a dam; the house was floated into the wood on the bank, and there deposited uninjured. In the year 1784, when there were such extensive inundations in Europe, they also occurred in America, as Volney relates of the Susquehanna.—Maximilian.