It is impossible to give Bird's numbers correctly, for various bands of Indians kept joining and leaving him.] Clark Hears the News Before this inroad took place Clark had been planning a foray into the Indian country, and the news only made him hasten his preparations.

In May this adventurous leader had performed one of the feats which made him the darling of the backwoodsmen.

Painted and dressed like an Indian so as to deceive the lurking bands of savages, he and two companions left the fort he had built on the bank of the Mississippi, and came through the wilderness to Harrodsburg.

They lived on the buffaloes they shot, and when they came to the Tennessee River, which was then in flood, they crossed the swift torrent on a raft of logs bound together with grapevines.

At Harrodsburg they found the land court open, and thronged with an eager, jostling crowd of settlers and speculators, who were waiting to enter lands in the surveyor's office.