d Clark take the fort? What did the Americans get possession
of by this victory? What happened at the end of the Revolutionary
War? What did we say? What is said of the grave at Louisville,
Kentucky? What did Clark get for us?

GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM
(1738-1824).

169. What General Putnam did for Washington, and what the British
said of Putnam's work.--When the British had possession of Boston
in the time of the Revolution, Washington asked Rufus Putnam,[1] who
was a great builder of forts, to help him drive them out. Putnam set
to work, one dark, stormy night, and built a fort on some high land[2]
overlooking Boston Harbor.

[Illustration: PUTNAM'S FORT. General Washington looking at the
British Ships in Boston Harbor.]

When the British commander woke up the next morning, he saw the
American cannon pointed at his ships. He was so astonished that he
could scarcely believe his eyes. "Why," said he, "the rebels have
done more in one night than my whole army could have done in a week."
Another officer, who had command of the British vessels, said, "If
the Americans hold that fort, I cannot keep a ship in the harbor."

Well, we know what happened. Our men did hold that fort, and the
British had to leave Boston. Next to General Washington, General
Rufus Putnam was the man who made them go; for not many officers in
the American army could build such a fort as he could.

[Footnote 1: Rufus Putnam was born in Sutton, Massachusetts.]

[Footnote 2: Dorchester Heights: now South Boston.]

170. General Putnam builds the _Mayflower_; goes down the Ohio River
and makes the first settlement in Ohio.--After the war was over,
General Putnam started with a company of people from New England,
to make a settlement on the Ohio River. In the spring of 1788 he and
his emigrants built a boat at a place just above Pittsburg.[3] They
named this boat the _Mayflower_,[4] because they were Pilgrims going
west to make their home there.

[Illustration: EMIGRANTS IN THE _Mayflower_.]

At that time there was not a white settler in what is now the state
of Ohio. Most of that country was covered with thick woods. There
were no roads through those woods, and there was not a steamboat or
a railroad either in America or in the world. If you look on the map[5]
and follow down the Ohio River from Pittsburg, you will come to a
place where the Muskingum joins the Ohio. At that place the
_Mayflower_ stopped, and the emigrants landed and beg