but a combination of accidents resulted in his getting only a dozen or so from this source. [Footnote:  Four companies were to be raised on the Holston; but only one actually went to Kentucky; and most of its members deserted when they found out about the true nature of the expedition.] Around Pittsburg the jealousy between the Virginians and Pennsylvanians hampered him greatly.  Moreover, many people were strongly opposed to sending any men to Kentucky at all, deeming the drain on their strength more serious than the value of the new land warranted; for they were too short-sighted rightly to estimate what the frontiersmen had really done.  When he had finally raised his troops he was bothered by requests from the different forts to aid detachments of the local militia in expeditions against bands of marauding Indians.

    He Starts Down the Ohio.

But Clark never for a moment wavered nor lost sight of his main object.  He worked steadily on, heedless of difficulty and disappointment, and late in the spring at last got together four small companies of frontiersmen from the clearings and the scattered hunters’ camps.  In May, 1778, he left the Redstone settlements, taking not only his troops—­one hundred and fifty in all [Footnote:  Clark’s letter to George Mason, Nov. 19, 1779.  Given in “Clark’s Campaign in the Illinois” (Cincinnati, 1869), for the first time; one of Robert Clarke’s excellent Ohio Valley Historical Series.]—­but also a considerable number of private adventurers and settlers with their families.  He touched at Pittsburg and Wheeling to get his stores.  Then the flotilla of clumsy flatboats, manned by tall riflemen, rowed and drifted cautiously down the Ohio between the melancholy and unbroken reaches of Indian-haunted forest.  The presence of the families shows that even this expedition had the usual peculiar western character of being undertaken half for conquest, half for settlement.

He landed at the mouth of the Kentucky, but rightly concluded that as a starting-point against the British posts it would be better to choose a place farther west, so he drifted on down the stream, and on the 27th of May [Footnote:  This is the date given in the deposition, in the case of Floyd’s heirs, in 1815; see MSS. in Col.  Durrett’s library at Louisville.  Clark’s dates, given from memory, are often a day or two out.  His “Memoir” is of course less accurate than the letter to Mason.] reached the Falls of the Ohio, where the river broke into great rapids or riffles of swift water.  This spot he chose, both because from it he could threaten and hold in check the different Indian tribes, and because he deemed it wise to have some fort to protect in the future the craft that might engage in the river trade, when they stopped to prepare for the passage of the rapids.  Most of the families that had come with him had gone off to the interior of Kentucky, but several were left, and these settled on an island near the falls, where they raised a crop