He Meets a Party of Hunters.

He intended to land some three leagues below the entrance of the Tennessee River, [Footnote:  At the old Fort Massac, then deserted.  The name is taken from that of an old French commander; it is not a corruption of Fort Massacre, as has been asserted.] thence to march on foot against the Illinois towns; for he feared discovery if he should attempt to ascend the Mississippi, the usual highway by which the fur traders went up to the quaint French hamlets that lay between the Kaskaskia and the Illinois rivers.  Accordingly he double-manned his oars and rowed night and day until he reached a small island off the mouth of the Tennessee, where he halted to make his final preparations, and was there joined by a little party of American hunters, [Footnote In his “Memoir” he says “from the States”; in his letter to Mason he calls them “Englishmen,” probably to show that they were not French, as they had just come from Kaskaskia.  He almost always spoke of the English proper as British.] who had recently been in the French settlements.  The meeting was most fortunate.  The hunters entered eagerly into Clark’s plans, joining him for the campaign, and they gave him some very valuable information.  They told him that the royal commandant was a Frenchman, Rocheblave, whose head-quarters were at the town of Kaskaskia; that the fort was in good repair, the militia were well drilled and in constant readiness to repel attack, while spies were continually watching the Mississippi, and the Indians and the coureurs des bois were warned to be on the look-out for any American force, if the party were discovered in time the hunters believed that the French would undoubtedly gather together instantly to repel them, having been taught to hate and dread the backwoodsmen as more brutal and terrible than any Indians; and in such an event the strength of the works and the superiority of the French in numbers would render the attack very hazardous.  But they thought that a surprise would enable Clark to do as he wished, and they undertook to guide him by the quickest and shortest route to the towns.

    The March to Kaskaskia.

Clark was rather pleased than otherwise to learn of the horror with which the French regarded the backwoodsmen.  He thought it would render them more apt to be panic-struck when surprised, and also more likely to feel a strong revulsion of gratitude when they found that the Americans meant them well and not ill.  Taking their new allies for guides, the little body of less than two hundred men started north across the wilderness, scouts being scattered out well ahead of them, both to kill game for their subsistence and to see that their march was not discovered by any straggling Frenchman or Indian.  The first fifty miles led through tangled and pathless forest, the toil of travelling being very great.  After that the work was less difficult as they got out among the prairies, but on these great