cultivated widely. Here the old trace—for the ancient name clings to it—is helped along by dint of corduroy bridges and stone and wooden culverts. Between Sumner and Olney the corduroy bridges are frequent and exceedingly rough, particularly if you are hurrying along at nightfall to gain the portals of a comparatively comfortable inn at Olney. Westward the road ploughs its way through the marshes and the mist to the little Big Muddy and across to the Little Wabash about where the old trace ran. Here the fogs lie heaviest, shutting off all view of the low-lying, bushy wastes. In midsummer the fog and marshes warn the explorer away; what of this land when the rivers are loosed by the winter floods and are streaming wildly along the vast stretch of the stunted bush and vine? The scene presented to Clark's Virginians and Frenchmen in February 1779 cannot by any means be pictured by one to whom these swamps are unknown; to such as know them, the picture, though probably imperfect, is one of horror. To row a boat where the current is swift is fatiguing labor, and to walk in the water, when each step
