ntucky," which was done to keep his real
purpose a secret. He was also supplied with a large sum of money and
told to enlist four companies of men, of whom he was to be the colonel.
These he recruited among the hunters and pioneers of the frontier, who
were the kind of men he wanted, and in the spring of 1778 he set out on
his daring expedition.

With a force of about one hundred and fifty men Colonel Clark floated
down the Ohio River in boats, landing at length about fifty miles above
the river's mouth and setting off through the woods towards Kaskaskia.
It was a difficult journey, and they had many hardships. Their food ran
out on the way and they had to live on roots to keep from starvation.
But at length one night they came near enough to hear the fiddle and the
dancing. How they stopped the dance you have read.

Thus ends the first part of our story. It was easy enough to end, as has
been seen. But there was a second part which was not so easy. You must
know that the British had other strongholds in that country. One of them
was Detroit, on the Detroit River, near Lake Erie. This was their
starting-point. Far to the south, on the Wabash River, in what is now
the State of Indiana, was another fort called Vincennes, which lay about
one hundred and fifty miles to the east of Fort Kaskaskia. This was an
old French fort also, and it was held by the French for the British as
Kaskaskia had been. Colonel Clark wanted this fort too, and got it
without much trouble. He had not men enough to take it by force, so he
sent a French priest there, who told the people that their best friends
were the Americans, not the British. It was not hard to make them
believe this, for the French people had never liked the British. So they
hauled down the British ensign and hauled up the Stars and Stripes, and
Vincennes became an American fort.

After that Colonel Clark went back to Kentucky, proud to think that he
had won the great Northwest Territory for the United States with so
little trouble. But he might have known that the British would not let
themselves be driven out of the country in this easy manner, and before
the winter was over he heard news that was not much to his liking.
Colonel Hamilton, the English commander at Detroit, had marched down to
Vincennes and taken the fort back again. It was also said that he
intended to capture Kaskaskia, and then march south and try and win
Kentucky for the English. This Hamilton was the man