Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/30

26 the trail passing from Fort Massac eastward of the Massac County lakes with the Kaskaskia and Shawneetown trace is not more than a day's march from Fort Massac and is not in a prairie. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Clark's brave band stole northward on the middle trace, the Buffalo Gap route. Clark would not have commanded his guide, under pain of death, to find the Kaskaskia Trace if the party had been traversing that trace and had merely missed the way. Every implication is that the Kaskaskia Trace was the goal sought and not yet found.

The first day's march of about eighteen miles was a hard one, passing over the winding trail which skirted the southern side of the marshes that flanked the sloughs and lakes of Massac County, but finally leading to the bluffs, near the Cache River, where, probably on Indian Point, the first night's camp was pitched.

The first taste of the swamps of Illinois was not discouraging, and on the day after, June 29, the march was resumed. The route today was on the top of the water-