It is important to note here that the Illinois of Clark's day--as is partly true now--was composed of three kinds of land: swampy or "drowned" lands, prairie land, and timber land. Being practically a level country, the forests became as prominent landmarks as mountains and hills are in rugged districts. Routes of travel clung to the prairies; and camping-places, if water could be had in the neighborhood, were always chosen on the edge of a forest where wood could be obtained. Between wood and water, of course the latter was the greater necessity. The prairie district in Illinois does not extend below Williamson County, and famous Phelps Prairie in that county is the most southern in the state.[4] Both routes from Fort Massac made straight, therefore, for Phelps Prairie, in which the town of Bainbridge, Williamson County, now stands. Here the two routes joined again; or, rather, the Buffalo Gap route met, in Phelps Prairie, the Kaskaskia Trace, as the "Old Massac Road" had met it in Pope County. The former point of intersection was on the "Brooks place," section 9, township 9, range 2E, Williamson County.[5] The Buffalo Gap route was known as the "middle trail;" the third route northwest from Fort Massac pursued this path to a point on the Cache above Indian Point; thence it swung westward, keeping far south of the prairie land, passed near Carbondale, Williamson County, and crossed the Big Muddy River at Murphysboro.[6] It was known as the "western trail." Not touching the prairie land, it is plain that the route could be used only in the driest of midsummer weather. The evidence that Clark's guides took the middle trail is overwhelming; the western trail was too wet and did not touch any prairie--this utterly excludes that route from the list of possibilities. According to Clark's _Memoir_, on the third day out the party reached a prairie where the chief guide became confused; Clark's command to him was to discover and take them into the hunter's road that led from the east into Kaskaskia. There can be no doubt that this "hunter's road" which came from the east was the Kaskaskia-Shawneetown trace, which the Old Massac Road joined in Pope County, or that the middle trail was the one which the party had been following; the junction of the middle trail on the Brooks Place, above mentioned, is in Phelps Prairie and about a three days' march from Fort Massac. The junction of the trail passing from Fort Massac eastward of the Massac County lakes with the Kaskaskia and Shawneetown trace is not more than a day's march from Fort Massac and is not in a prairie. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Clark's brave band stole northward on the middle trace, the Buffalo Gap route. Clark would not have commanded his guide, under pain of death, to find the Kaskaskia Trace if the party had been traversing that trace and had merely missed the way. Every implication is that the Kaskaskia Trace was the goal sought and not yet found.