Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/230

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226
MILITARY ROADS

lies today. With water but three or four feet deep, a few acres of land might have been uncovered, though not sufficiently elevated today to be termed a hill or even high ground. There is a point on the Little —abash above the mouth of the Fox that can be made to answer in a general way Clark's and Bowman's descriptions—going on the doubtful supposition that their descriptions were entirely accurate. In order to find a spot where Clark saw nearly five miles of water before him, Mr. Draper suggests a point about two miles above the mouth of the Fox, where there is a wide bottom on the west of the Little —abash, another bottom between that stream and the Fox, and another east of the Fox.[1] The possibility that the distance was exaggerated by Clark (who said Vincennes was two hundred and forty miles from Kaskaskia when it was not over one hundred and seventy-five) is not considered. As a matter of fact, the whole plan of finding today five miles of low ground from any point west of the Little —abash to the east of either the Fox or the Big Muddy, is over-

  1. Id., fols. 14, 43.