Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/231

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APPENDIX B
227

thrown by Clark's statement in the Memoir that (on the western side of the Little Wabash) "we formed a camp on a height which we found on the bank of the river." Mr. Draper's objection to the Little Wabash and Big Muddy crossing-place was because the high ground on the bank of the Little Wabash (seemingly here referred to by Clark) prevented there being five miles of low ground to the opposite side of the Big Muddy.[1] If Clark and Bowman gave the distance of width of water correctly, the crossing-place was two miles above the mouth of the Fox, and Clark's statement of forming a camp on a height on the river bank is totally inexplicable—for there is no height at this point to answer such a description. If, by "nearly" five miles, Clark meant three miles, misjudging distance on water inversely with the usual way, his camp could have been on the immediate high bank of the Little Wabash above the mouth of the Big Muddy.[2]

Certain other considerations have a ten-

  1. Id., xxiv, fol. 9.
  2. Id.