im; she despised and defied the Spaniard as she despised and defied the Indian. They blocked the way, they must depart.
Clark's old veteran officers Christy, Logan, Montgomery, sent word they would serve under his command. The French squadron at Philadelphia was to set sail for the Gulf.
Major Fulton and Michaux, Clark's right-hand men, travelled all over the West enlisting men, provisions, and money. De Pauw engaged to furnish four hundred barrels of flour and a thousand-weight of bacon, and to send brass cannon over the mountains. In December Clark's men were already cutting timber to build boats on the Bear Grass. Five thousand men were to start in the Spring, provided Congress did not oppose and Genet could raise a million dollars.
In despair Carondelet wrote home, saying that if the project planned was carried into effect, he would have no other alternative but to surrender.
"Having no reinforcements to hope for from Havana, I have no further hope than in the faults the enemy may commit and in accidents which may perhaps favour us."
Carondelet gave up. In March he wrote again, "The commandant at Post Vincennes has offered cannon for the use of the expedition."
Early in January Clark was writing to De Pauw, "Have your stores at the Falls by the 20th of February, as in all probability we shall descend the river at that time."
Montgomery reported, "arms and ammunition, five hundred bushels of corn and ten thousand pounds of pork, also twenty thousand weight of buffalo beef, eleven hundred weight of bear meat, seventy-four pair venison hams, and some beef tongues."
With two hundred men Montgomery lay at the mouth of the Ohio ready to cross over. Not ninety Spaniards of regular troops were there to defend St. Louis, and two hundred militia, and the Governor had only too much reason to fear that St. Louis would open her ga
