Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/233

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APPENDIX B
229

that Bowman meant Bonpas for Fox.[1] Choosing between possible errors, the present writer finds it easier to believe that Bowman misjudged the width of water crossed on the fifteenth, than that he called the Bonpas the Fox. For on the seventeenth the heads of the Bonpas are specifically accounted for by Bowman as follows: "17th. Marched early; crossed several runs, very deep." Mr. Draper does not account for these, and it is difficult to do so if they were not the heads of the Bonpas. For, if Clark crossed the Little Wabash just above the mouth of the Fox, his route, after crossing the Bonpas, was northeast, and would, without any sort of question, have been on watersheds between little tributaries, first of the Bonpas, and then of the Embarras. Again, by every account, it is sure Clark and Bowman expected to strike the Embarras, and strike it at about seven or eight miles due west from Vincennes. If, as Draper believed, they were pursuing an old trail, which, it is well known,[2] ran from the crossing-place of the Little Wabash

  1. Id., fols. 49, 50.
  2. Id., xxiv, fol. 13.