Certain other considerations have a tendency to influence the present writer in believing that the crossing-place was here--above the mouth of the Big Muddy. It was exceedingly wet from the day Clark left Kaskaskia; even on the watersheds he found deep standing water. On reaching the Petit Fork he found the rivers at flood-tide. By turning north to the Clay County route he would strike the Little Wabash at a more northerly point, and would almost completely head the deep little Bonpas which lay between the Fox and the Big Wabash. The Clay County route was in one sense, then, a watershed route, compared with the Wayne County route. It is difficult to believe that Clark's guides would ignore this after having been compelled to cross the Petit Fork on felled trees. Again, on the second day out from the crossing-place of the Little Wabash, Bowman records: "16th. Marched all day through rain and water; crossed Fox river." If this entry is correct, of course the Little Wabash and Big Muddy crossing-place is completely established. Mr. Draper, holding that the Fox was crossed simultaneously with the Little Wabash on the fifteenth, suggests that Bowman meant Bonpas for Fox.[168] Choosing between possible errors, the present writer finds it easier to believe that Bowman misjudged the width of water crossed on the fifteenth, than that he called the Bonpas the Fox. For on the seventeenth the heads of the Bonpas are specifically accounted for by Bowman as follows: "17th. Marched early; crossed several runs, very deep." Mr. Draper does not account for these, and it is difficult to do so if they were not the heads of the Bonpas. For, if Clark crossed the Little Wabash just above the mouth of the Fox, his route, after crossing the Bonpas, was northeast, and would, without any sort of question, have been on watersheds between little tributaries, first of the Bonpas, and then of the Embarras. Again, by every account, it is sure Clark and Bowman expected to strike the Embarras, and strike it at about seven or eight miles due west from Vincennes. If, as Draper believed, they were pursuing an old trail, which, it is well known,[169] ran from the crossing-place of the Little Wabash two miles above the mouth of the Fox to the Wabash just below the mouth of the Embarras, how can it be explained that the army reached, or ever intended to reach, the Embarras seven or eight miles above its mouth? The very name would warn them away and it seems highly improbable that, if what was later known as the southern route was traversed, the army would ever have seen the Embarras. APPENDIX C OPERATIONS OF THE ARMY ON THE MAUMEE AS GIVEN IN THE IRWIN MANUSCRIPT[170]