98 The Winning of the West 



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 lands 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. 



Clark instantly started to build a pirogue; then 

 crossing over the first channel he put up a scaffold 

 on the edge of the flooded plain. He ferried his 

 men over, and brought the baggage across and 

 placed it on the scaffold; then he swam the pack- 

 horses over, loaded them as they stood belly-deep 

 in the water beside the scaffold, and marched his 

 men on through the water until they came to the 

 second channel, which was crossed as the first had 

 been. The building of the pirogue and the ferrying 

 took three days in all. 



They had by this time come so near Vincennes 

 that they dared not fire a gun for fear of being dis- 

 covered; besides, the floods had driven the game 

 all away; so that they soon began to feel hunger, 

 while their progress was very slow, and they suf- 

 fered much from the fatigue of traveling all day 



