rth of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi,
now included in the present Great Lake States.

In this vast region of forest and prairie the only settlements were the
scattered French hamlets, begun in the early days of exploration, when the
French occupied the land and traded with the Indians for fur. These
hamlets had passed into the hands of the English after the Last French War
and were made the centres of English power, from which, as we have seen,
the English commanders aroused the Indians against the backwoodsmen remote
from their home settlements.

These few villages or trading-posts, which were defended by forts, were
scattered here and there at convenient places along the river courses, the
three strongest forts being at Vincennes, on the Wabash, at Kaskaskia, and
at Detroit.

Over all the rest of the wild territory roamed hostile Indian tribes,
hunting and fighting against one another as well as against the
frontiersmen.

Clark saw that if this region should be conquered the spreading prairies
could be opened up for settlement.

As the first step in carrying out his plan, he needed to secure aid from
Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia. Early in October, 1777, he
started out on horseback from Harrodsburg, one of the Kentucky
settlements, to ride through the forests and over the mountains to
Williamsburg, then the capital of the State. So urgent was his haste that
he stopped on the way but a single day at his father's house, the home of
his childhood, and then pressed on to Williamsburg. It took a whole month
to make this journey of six hundred and twenty miles.

Patrick Henry at once fell in with Clark's plan. He arranged that the
government should furnish six thousand dollars. But as it was needful that
the utmost secrecy should be preserved, nothing was said about the matter
to the Virginia Assembly. Clark was to raise his own company among the
frontiersmen. The whole burden of making the necessary preparations rested
upon him.

CLARK STARTS ON HIS LONG JOURNEY

With good heart he shouldered it, and in May, 1778, was ready with one
hundred and fifty-three men to start from the Redstone Settlements, on the
Monongahela River. He stopped at both Pittsburg and Wheeling for needed
supplies. Then his flatboats, manned by tall backwoodsmen in their
picturesque dress, rowed or floated cautiously down the Ohio River.

They did not know on how great a journey they had entered, for even to his
followers