Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/19

 CHAPTER I

N the twenty-fourth of June, 1778, George Rogers Clark, with about one hundred and seventy-five patriot adventurers, left the little pioneer settlement on Corn Island, in the Ohio River, opposite the present site of Louisville, Kentucky, for the conquest of the British posts of Kaskaskia and Vincennes in the "Illinois country."

The boats running day and night, the party reached Clark's first stopping-place, an island in the Ohio near the mouth of the Tennessee River, in four days. Just below this island was the site of old Fort Massac—now occupied by Metropolis, Massac County, Illinois—built probably by a vanguard