ian potatoes--some people call
them hoppines--that grew in the woods, and they were very scarce.
Sometimes the Indian boys would catch land terrapins. They would draw
their heads out and tie a string around their neck and hang them up a
few minutes, and then put them in a kettle of water with some corn--when
they had it--without taking the entrails out or shell off the terrapin,
and eat the soup as well as the meat. We had all liked to have starved
that week; we had no meat; I was glad to get away.

I staid three weeks with the French baker before I got an opportunity to
start home. I had a plenty to eat while I remained with the baker--good
light bread, bacon and sandy hill cranes, boiled in leyed corn, which
made a very good soup. I paid him three dollars per week for my board.

There was a Mr. Pyatt a Frenchman, and his wife, whose residence was at
St. Vincennes, with whom I had some acquaintance. They had moved up to
that Kickapoo town in the fall of the year in order to trade with the
Indians that winter. They were then ready to return home to Vincennes.
Mr. Pyatt had purchased a drove of horses from the Indians. He had to go
by land with his horses. Mrs. Pyatt hired a large perogue and four
Frenchmen to take her property home to Vincennes. I got a passage in her
perogue. She was very friendly to me; she did not charge me anything for
my passage.

We arrived in Vincennes in forty-eight hours after we left the Kickapoo
trading town, which is said to be two hundred and ten miles. The river
was very high, and the four hands rowed day and night. We never put to
land but twice to get a little wood to cook something to eat.

I staid five days at Vincennes before I got an opportunity of company to
go on my way home. It was too dangerous for one man to travel alone by
land without a gun. There was a Mr. Duff, who lived in the Illinois
country, came to Vincennes to move a Mrs. Moredock and family to the
Illinois. I got a passage with him by water. The morning I started from
Vincennes he was just ready to start before I knew I could get a passage
with him, and I had not time to write. I got a Mr. John Rice Jones, a
friend of mine, to write to Col. Edgar, living in Kaskaskia, in the
Illinois, who was a particular friend of mine, and sent it by the
express, a Frenchman, that was going to start that day from Vincennes to
Kaskaskia, which he could ride in four days, and request Col. Edgar to
write to my wife, who lived at Bel