Southwestern Railway, Xenia and Clay City; on the Wayne County route it would have been "Long Prairie" lying between Blue Point and Mount Erie. The "two Wabashes" on the Clay County route would have been the Little Wabash River and the Big Muddy Creek. By the Wayne County route the two Wabashes would have been the Little Wabash and Fox River. The indefatigable Lyman C. Draper, after a large correspondence with many of the best informed men in Illinois on the subject of the crossing-place of the Little Wabash, came to the firm conclusion that the two Wabashes were the Little Wabash and the Fox; the present writer after studying that correspondence and visiting the ground in question--which Mr. Draper did not find time to do--quite as firmly believes that the crossing-place was above the junction of the Little Wabash and Big Muddy Creek at the old McCauley's settlement--in the southeast corner of section 21 of Clay County, range 8E, two miles east of old Maysville, which was three-fourths of a mile south of the present Clay City station on the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern Railway. By this upper route Clark would have been on higher ground before and after crossing the Little Wabash. It is quite sure his party passed a salt spring (see p. 66) and the only one in this region was on this upper route. And finally, Bowman states that on the day after crossing the Little Wabash the party crossed the Fox River. This could not have been possible if the Little Wabash and Fox were crossed simultaneously. But even a slight discussion of the question may well be relegated to an appendix.[36] At either crossing-place, and the two are but a few miles apart, a most desperate situation confronted the intrepid Clark and his tired band of invaders.