sed to be a march of three
hundred miles. Major Lewis preserved his equanimity, and remarked that
"he had often seen the like mutiny among soldiers." On the eleventh of
March ten men deserted; others preparing to follow them, were disarmed
and forcibly detained, but some of them soon escaped. They were pursued
and brought back. When Major Lewis rejoined the advance party, one of
his men brought in a little bear, which he took to Captain Preston's
tent, where the major lodged that night, "by which," says Preston, "I
had a good supper and breakfast--a rarity." Major Lewis addressed the
men, encouraging them to believe that they would soon reach the
hunting-ground and find game, and reminded them that the horses would
support them for some time. The men, nevertheless, appeared obstinately
bent upon returning home, for they said that if they went forward they
must either perish or eat horses--neither of which they were willing to
do. The major then, stepping off a few yards, called upon all those who
would serve their country and share his fate, to go with him. All the
officers and some twenty or thirty privates joined him; the rest marched
off. In this conjuncture, when deserted by his own people, Lewis found
old Outacite, the Cherokee chief, willing to stand by him. Outacite
remarked, that "the white men could not bear hunger like Indians." The
expedition was now, of necessity, abandoned when they had arrived near
the Ohio River, and all made the best of their way home.

It appears to have required two weeks for them to reach the nearest
settlements, and during this interval they endured great sufferings from
cold and hunger, and some who separated from the main body, and
undertook to support themselves on the way back by hunting, perished.
When the main body reached the Burning Spring, in what is now Logan
County, they cut some buffalo hides, which they had left there on the
way down, into tuggs or long thongs, and ate them, after exposing them
to the flame of the Burning Spring. Hence Tugg River, separating
Virginia from Kentucky, derives its name. During the last two or three
days, it is said that they ate the strings of their moccasins, belts of
their hunting-shirts, and shot-pouch flaps. The art of extracting
nutriment from such articles is now lost.

"The Sandy Creek Voyage," as it was sometimes styled, appears to have
been directed against the Shawnee town near the junction of the Kanawha
and the Ohio, and perhaps