The Dellaway informs me that Lieut.

Governor Hamilton is defeated and himself taken prisoner," etc.
It is curious that none of the Tennessee annalists have noticed the departure of this expedition; very, very few of the deeds and wanderings of the old frontiersmen have been recorded; and in consequence historians are apt to regard these few as being exceptional, instead of typical.

Donelson was merely one of a hundred leaders of flotillas that went down the western rivers at this time.] Donelson's flotilla, after being joined by a number of other boats, especially at the mouth of the Clinch, consisted of some thirty craft, all told--flat-boats, dug-outs, and canoes.

There were probably two or three hundred people, perhaps many more, in the company; among them, as the journal records, "James Robertson's lady and children," the latter to the number of five.

The chief boat, the flag-ship of the flotilla, was the _Adventure_, a great scow, in which there were over thirty men, besides the families of some of them.
They embarked at Holston, Long Island, on December 22d, but falling water and heavy frosts detained them two months, and the voyage did not really begin until they left Cloud Creek on February 27, 1780.