The route by which they had to go was two hundred and forty miles in length.  It lay through a beautiful and well watered country, of groves and prairies; but at that season the march was necessarily attended with the utmost degree of hardship and fatigue.  The weather had grown mild, so that there was no suffering from cold; but in the thaw the ice on the rivers melted, great freshets followed, and all the lowlands and meadows were flooded.  Clark’s great object was to keep his troops in good spirits.  Of course he and the other officers shared every hardship and led in every labor.  He encouraged the men to hunt game; and to “feast on it like Indian war-dancers,” [Footnote:  Clark’s “Memoir.”] each company in turn inviting the others to the smoking and plentiful banquets.  One day they saw great herds of buffaloes and killed many of them.  They had no tents [Footnote:  State Department MSS.  Letters to Washington, Vol. 33, p. 90.  “A Journal of Col.  G. R. Clark.  Proceedings from the 29th Jan’y 1779 to the 26th March Inst.” [by Captain Bowman].  This journal has been known for a long time.  The original is supposed to have been lost; but either this is it or else it is a contemporary MS. copy.  In the “Campaign in the Illinois” (Cincinnati, Robert Clarke and Co., 1869), p. 99, there is a printed copy of the original.  The Washington MS. differs from it in one or two particulars.  Thus, the printed diary in the “Campaign,” on p. 99, line 3, says “fifty volunteers”; the MS. copy says “50 French volunteers.”  Line 5 in the printed copy says “and such other Americans”; in the MS. it says “and several other Americans.”  Lines 6 and 7 of the printed copy read as follows in the MS. (but only make doubtful sense):  “These with a number of horses designed for the settlement of Kantuck &c.  Jan. 30th, on which Col.  Clark,” etc.  Lines 10 and 11 of the printed copy read in the MS.:  “was let alone till spring that he with his Indians would undoubtedly cut us all off.”  Lines 13 and 14, of the printed copy read in the MS.  “Jan. 31st, sent an express to Cahokia for volunteers.  Nothing extraordinary this day."]; but at nightfall they kindled huge camp-fires, and spent the evenings merrily round the piles of blazing logs, in hunter fashion, feasting on bear’s ham and buffalo hump, elk saddle, venison haunch, and the breast of the wild turkey, some singing of love and the chase and war, and others dancing after the manner of the French trappers and wood-runners.

Thus they kept on, marching hard but gleefully and in good spirits until after a week they came to the drowned lauds of the Wabash.  They first struck the two branches of the Little Wabash.  Their channels were a league apart, but the flood was so high that they now made one great river five miles in width, the overflow of water being three feet deep in the shallowest part of the plains between and alongside them.