They embarked at Holston, Long Island, on December 22d, but falling water and heavy frosts detained them two months, and the voyage did not really begin until they left Cloud Creek on February 27, 1780.  The first ten days were uneventful.  The Adventure spent an afternoon and night on a shoal, until the water fortunately rose, and, all the men getting out, the clumsy scow was floated off.  Another boat was driven on the point of an island and sunk, her crew being nearly drowned; whereupon the rest of the flotilla put to shore, the sunken boat was raised and bailed out, and most of her cargo recovered.  At one landing-place a man went out to hunt, and got lost, not being taken up again for three days, though “many guns were fired to fetch him in,” and the four-pounder on the Adventure was discharged for the same purpose.  A negro became “much frosted in his feet and legs, of which he died.”  Where the river was wide a strong wind and high sea forced the whole flotilla to lay to, for the sake of the smaller craft.  This happened on March 7th, just before coming to the uppermost Chickamauga town; and that night, the wife of one Ephraim Peyton, who had himself gone with Robertson, overland, was delivered of a child.  She was in a boat whose owner was named Jonathan Jennings.

The next morning they soon came to an Indian village on the south shore.  The Indians made signs of friendliness, and two men started toward them in a canoe which the Adventure had in tow, while the flotilla drew up on the opposite side of the river.  But a half-breed and some Indians jumping into a pirogue paddled out to meet the two messengers and advised them to return to their comrades, which they did.  Several canoes then came off from the shore to the flotilla.  The Indians who were in them seemed friendly and were pleased with the presents they received; but while these were being distributed the whites saw a number of other canoes putting off, loaded with armed warriors, painted black and red.  The half-breed instantly told the Indians round about to paddle to the shore, and warned the whites to push off at once, at the same time giving them some instructions about the river.  The armed Indians went down along the shore for some time as if to intercept them; but at last they were seemingly left behind.

In a short time another Indian village was reached, where the warriors tried in vain to lure the whites ashore; and as the boats were hugging the opposite bank, they were suddenly fired at by a party in ambush, and one man slain.  Immediately afterwards a much more serious tragedy occurred.  There was with the flotilla a boat containing twenty-eight men, women, and children, among whom small-pox had broken out.  To guard against infection, it was agreed that it should keep well in the rear; being warned each night by the sound of a horn when it was time to go into camp.  As this forlorn boat-load of unfortunates came along, far behind the others, the Indians, seeing