Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/67

Rh of this march like a visit to these low lands which are now proving of great value to horse and cattle owners of northern Illinois as grazing grounds. Though my journey over Clark's route was made at the driest and most favorable season of the year, the mists, heavy as clouds, lay along the Bonpas, Fox, Little Wabash, Big Muddy, and Skillet and between them, and a thunderstorm made the modern road a veritable slough. From Vincennes to Xenia, the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern Railway is parallel with the old St. Louis Trace which was Clark's route here. But the student will find the journey by the old trace, throwing its curling lengths along the hills from Lawrenceville to Sumner, a most interesting though taxing experience. At Sumner the trace drops into the bottom-lands where the mists seem to lie forever and where little villages are perched upon knolls of a few thousand feet in diameter, surrounded by swamps and prairies that are now being drained and