shed between the Cache River on the left (west) and Dutchman's Creek on the right. Buffalo Gap was passed today, a mile south of the present Goreville, Johnson County. Camp was pitched this night, after a twenty-mile march, probably at the spring two miles north of the present Pulley's Mill. The route all day was along the buffalo trail or hunter's road from which Buffalo Gap received its name.[1] This gap, like Moccasin Gap to the eastward, was a famous portal to the prairie country for the bison, Indian, and white man. Two old-time state roads were built through these two gaps.[2]
Pushing forward from the spring near Pulley's Mill on the morning of June 30, the Virginians ere long came into the prairie lands lying in Williamson County. Phelps Prairie was reached first, the path entering the southern portion of the prairie. Here it was that "John Saunders, our principal guide, appeared confused, and we soon discovered that he was totally lost." These Illinois prairies are almost treeless, save near
