On the fourth of October, with enough provisions to last a few days, without its commander, who was at Fort Washington hurrying on three hundred militia, the army under Butler crossed the Miami River and entered the shadows of the Indian land. We have no definite record of the first days' marches. It would not seem that more than five miles a day were accomplished. The route was in alignment with the Eaton Road between Hamilton and Eaton, Preble County. Four Mile (from Hamilton) Creek--then known as Joseph's Creek--was crossed near the old "Fearnot Mill," and the first encampment was made near what was afterward known as Scott's tanyard on Seven Mile Creek--then called St. Clair's Creek.[102] The line of march was up Seven Mile Creek, west of Eaton, where the creek was forded. "The trace cannot now be definitely located," wrote a Preble County annalist, a generation ago. "It was not cut to as great width as most of the military roads, and the line has been almost wholly obscured by the growth of the forest and the action of the weather upon the soil."[103] Narrow as the road here was, it was cut wider than St. Clair intended. After the first day or two General Butler, as he suggested in his letter of October 3, decided that St. Clair's tri-track plan of march was impracticable, and gave orders that but one road should be cut, and that the army march in a body. On the seventh St. Clair came hurrying on from Fort Washington to join his army. The militia had gone on on the fifth, but in bad temper. Several deserted even upon arriving at Fort Washington. A sergeant and twenty-five men deserted on the night of the third. A score of men deserted from Fort Hamilton the night before the army marched. The anxiety of the officers, and the herculean efforts to get the army into fighting trim, had not created a very loyal spirit in the men who marched. A little more chicanery and misjudgment and the entire army would have mutinied. St. Clair, before mounting his horse, wrote Knox that his troops amounted in all to twenty-three hundred. "I trust I shall find them sufficient," he added. The words remind one of Braddock's last letter to the British Ministry before leaving Fort Cumberland for the death-trap on the Monongahela in 1755. Major Ebenezer Denny traveled with St. Clair as aide-de-camp and has left us the official account of the army's march. Denny was not anxious to serve. "You must go," General Harmar declared, "some will escape and you may be among the number."[104]