[Illustration]

At another river the little drummer was floated over on the top of his drum.  At last the men drew near to Vin-cennes.  They could hear the morning and evening gun in the British fort.  But the worst of the way was yet to pass.  The Wa-bash River had risen over its banks.  The water was five miles wide.  The men marched from one high ground to another through the cold water.  They caught an Indian with a canoe.  In this they got across the main river.  But there was more water to cross.  The men were so hungry that some of them fell down in the water.  They had to be carried out.

Clark’s men got frightened at last, and then they had no heart to go any farther.  But Clark remembered what the Indians did when they went to war.  He took a little gun-powder in his hand.  He poured water on it.  Then he rubbed it on his face.  It made his face black.

With his face blackened like an Indian’s, he gave an Indian war-whoop.  The men followed him again.

The men were tired and hungry.  But they soon reached dry ground.  They were now in sight of the fort.  Clark marched his little army round and round in such a way as to make it seem that he had many men with him.  He wrote a fierce letter to the British com-mand-er.  He behaved like a general with a large army.

After some fighting, the British com-mand-er gave up.  Clark’s little army took the British fort.  This brave action saved to our country the land that lies between the Ohio River and the Lakes.  It stopped the sending of Indians to kill the settlers in the West.

DANIEL BOONE AND HIS GRAPEVINE SWING.

Daniel Boone was the first settler of Ken-tuck-y.  He knew all about living in the woods.  He knew how to hunt the wild animals.  He knew how to fight Indians, and how to get away from them.

Nearly all the men that came with him to Kentucky the first time were killed.  One was eaten by wolves.  Some of them were killed by Indians.  Some of them went into the woods and never came back.  Nobody knows what killed them.

Only Boone and his brother were left alive.  They needed some powder and some bullets.  They wanted some horses.  Boone’s brother went back across the mountains to get these things.  Boone staid in his little cabin all alone.

Boone could hear the wolves howl near his cabin at night.  He heard the panthers scream in the woods.  But he did not mind being left all alone in these dark forests.  The Indians came to his cabin when he was away.  He did not want to see these vis-it-ors.  He did not dare to sleep in his cabin all the time.  Sometimes he slept under a rocky cliff.  Sometimes he slept in a cane-brake.  A cane-brake is a large patch of growing canes such as fishing rods are made of.

Once a mother bear tried to kill him.  He fired his gun at her, but the bullet did not kill her.  The bear ran at him.  He held his long knife out in his hand.  The bear ran against it and was killed.