336
EXPEDITION  TO  THE
that the combined effects of the two calamities, experienced within the last twenty-four hours, had required a change in our mode of travelling. The navigation of the river had been very slow, since we had advanced but about one hundred and thirty miles in six days; and it threatened to become still more tedious on account of the increasing shallowness of the water. Our provisions were not sufficient to support so large a party; and the country being destitute of animals, afforded us no supply. The only game killed from the time that the party left the fort were two ducks. Our guide further informed us, that if we continued to ascend the St. Peter in canoes, we should lose much precious time, arrive on Red River after the buffalo had left it, and find it, probably, impossible to reach the head of Lake Superior before the winter season had commenced ; in which case we should be compelled to winter somewhere west of the lakes. As this comported neither with Major Long's wishes, nor with the instructions which he had received from the War Department, it induced him to relinquish the plan of ascending in canoes, and to send back nine soldiers, retaining but twelve men as a guard, which in the present dispersed state of the Indians promised sufficient protection. By proceeding all in one party on land, much time would necessarily be saved, and the bends of the river need not be followed Although this plan did not afford us as good a prospect of becoming acquainted with the nature of the country as the mode we had heretofore followed, yet in the present state of our affairs it was judged to be the only one that could be adopted with prudence; and as this modification in our manner of travelling required a corresponding change in the arrangement of our baggage, we proceeded a few miles higher up, to a fine prairie, where we found good pasture