d wished. Bowman
corroborates Hamilton, saying: "We sent a party to intercept them, but
missed them. However, we took one of their men, ... the rest making
their escape under the cover of the night into the fort." Bowman's
journal is for this siege much more trustworthy than Clark's "Memoir."
In the latter, Clark makes not a few direct misstatements, and many
details are colored so as to give them an altered aspect. As an instance
of the different ways in which he told an event at the time, and thirty
years later, take the following accounts of the same incident. The first
is from the letter to Henry (State Department MSS.), the second from the
"Memoir." I. "A few days ago I received certain intelligence of Wm.
Moires my express to you being killed near the Falls of Ohio, news truly
disagreeable to me, as I fear many of my letters will fall into the
hands of the enemy at Detroit." 2. "Poor Myres the express, who set out
on the 15th, got killed on his passage, and his packet fell into the
hands of the enemy; but I had been so much on my guard that there was
not a sentence in it that could be of any disadvantage to us for the
enemy to know; and there were private letters from soldiers to their
friends designedly wrote to deceive in cases of such accidents." Firing
was kept up with very little intermission throughout the night.

His whole account of the night attack and of his treating with Hamilton
is bombastic. If his account of the incessant "blaze of fire" of the
Americans is true, they must have wasted any amount of ammunition
perfectly uselessly. Unfortunately, most of the small western historians
who have written about Clark have really damaged his reputation by the
absurd inflation of their language. They were adepts in the
forcible-feeble style of writing, a sample of which is their rendering
him ludicrous by calling him "the Hannibal of the West," and the
"Washington of the West." Moreover, they base his claims to greatness
not on his really great deeds, but on the half-imaginary feats of
childish cunning he related in his old age.] At one o'clock the moon
set, and Clark took advantage of the darkness to throw up an
intrenchment within rifle-shot of the strongest battery, which consisted
of two guns. All of the cannon and swivels in the fort were placed about
eleven feet above the ground, on the upper floors of the strong
block-houses that formed the angles of the palisaded walls. At sunrise
on the 24th the rifle