These streams flow southward. Kaskaskia lay some fifty miles south of St. Louis and the later St. Louis Trace. The route of the more ancient Kaskaskia Trace to Vincennes, therefore, ran some seventy-five miles in a northeast direction; then, turning due east, it ran about one hundred miles to the Wabash. For the first seventy-five miles it was a watershed route, coursing along the highland prairies between Three Mile, Plum, Crooked, Grand Point, and Raccoon Creeks--all tributaries of the Kaskaskia River--on the west and north, and the heads of the St. Mary, Beaucoup, and Big Muddy Rivers on the east and south. This backbone line of prairie land runs straight northeast through Randolph and Washington Counties, cutting into corners of Perry, Jefferson, and Marion Counties. But here in Marion County the backbone, which had been accommodatingly trending eastward, turned quickly to the north to avoid the treacherous Little Wabash; at this point the old trace divided into two courses both of which ran to Vincennes. One course, probably that known later as the eastern half of the St. Louis Trace, passed through the center of Clay, Richland, and Lawrence Counties, crossing both the Little Wabash and Big Muddy a short distance above their junction, the Embarras near Lawrence, and the Wabash at Vincennes. The other branch of the Kaskaskia Trace passed through the northern portion of Wayne, Edwards and Wabash Counties, crossing the Little Wabash and Fox some two miles above their junction, the Bonpas River, near Bonpas, and the Wabash, two miles above St. Francisville. From this ford the route led up the eastern shore of the Wabash about nine miles to Vincennes. By any route, at any time of year, the journey across Illinois was a hardship no thinking man would undergo, save only on the most important mission; in the winter season--with the Wabash a surging sea, the Little Wabash a running lake, Crooked Creek treacherously straight, water frozen on the prairies, the "points" of timber swampy morasses--all communication landward was cut off, with the beavers and blue racers swimming for the high ground.