In the Current of the Revolution 63 



the different forts to aid detachments of the local 

 militia in expeditions against bands of marauding 

 Indians. 



But Clark never for a moment wavered or 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 com- 

 panies 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 14 but also a consider- 

 able number of private adventurers and settlers with 

 their families. He touched at Pittsburg and Wheel- 

 ing to get his stores. Then the flotilla of clumsy 

 flat-boats, 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 expedi- 

 tion had the usual peculiar Western character of 

 being undertaken half for conquest, half for settle- 

 ment. 



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 

 further West, so he drifted on down the stream, and 

 on the 27th of May 15 reached the Falls of the Ohio, 



14 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 His- 

 torical Series. 



16 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 



