s of
two or three wars. I walked over the scene of Dudley's defeat in 1812;
of Wayne's victory in 1793; and of the sites of forts Deposit and
Defiance, and other events celebrated in history. From Fort Defiance,
which is at the junction of the River _Auglaize_, we rode to Fort Wayne,
sleeping in a deserted hut half way. We passed the summit to the source
of the Wabash, horseback, sleeping at an Indian house, where all the men
were drunk, and kept up a howling that would have done credit to a pack
of hungry wolves. The Canadians, who managed our canoe, in the mean time
brought it from water to water on their shoulders, and we again
embarked, leaving our horses at the forks of the Wabash. The whole of
this long and splendid valley, then wild and in the state of nature,
till below the Tippecanoe, we traversed, day by day, stopping at
Vincennes, Terrehaute, and a hundred other points, and entered the Ohio
and landed safely at Shawneetown. Here it was determined to send the
Canadians with our canoe, round by water to St. Louis, while we hired a
sort of stage-wagon to cross the prairies. I visited the noted locality
of fluor spar in Pope County, Illinois, and crossing the mountainous
tract called the Knobs, rejoined the party at the Saline. Here I found
my old friend Enmenger, of Kemp and Keen memory, to be the innkeeper. On
reaching St. Louis, General Cass rode over the country to see the
Missouri, while I, in a sulky, revisited the mines in Washington, and
brought back a supply of its rich minerals. We proceeded in our canoe up
the River Illinois to the rapids, at what is called Fort Rock, or
Starved Rock, and from thence, finding the water low, rode on horseback
to Chicago, horses having been sent, for this purpose, from Chicago to
meet us. There was not a house from Peoria to John Craft's, four miles
from Chicago. I searched for, and found, the fossil tree, reported to
lie in the rocks in the bed of the river _Des Plaines_. The sight of
Lake Michigan, on nearing Chicago, was like the ocean. We found an
immense number of Indians assembled. The Potawattomies, in their gay
dresses and on horseback, gave the scene an air of Eastern magnificence.
Here we were joined by Judge Solomon Sibley, the other commissioner from
Detroit, whence he had crossed the peninsula on horseback, and we
remained in negotiation with the Indians during fifteen consecutive
days. A treaty was finally signed by them on the 24th of August, by
which, for