The records of the next few years were very much confused. Young Clark visited various portions of the West, perhaps remaining longest at a claim he took up near the mouth of Grave Creek, on the present site of Moundsville, West Virginia, from which point he addressed letters to his brother Jonathan, January 9, 1773. In the Spring of the next year he formed one of Captain Cressap's party assembled at Wheeling in readiness for service in Dunmore's War. In this war Clark saw considerable service, following Dunmore's wing of the army, but not participating in the battle at Point Pleasant, which was fought by General Lewis. In the Spring of the year following, 1775, we find Clark returning again to his original mission in the West,--that of surveying land and securing tracts for himself. "I have engaged," he wrote his brother Jonathan from Stewart's Crossing, "as a deputy surveyor under Cap'n Hancock Lee, for to lay out lands on ye Kentuck, for ye Ohio company, at ye rate of 80£ pr. year, and ye privilege of taking what land I want." Midsummer found him at Leestown, a mile below Frankfort, seventy miles up the Kentucky River, where he said fifty families would be living by Christmas time. The public, however, needed the service of the young man, and it is plain that his experience in the war had been serviceable, for he was made commander of the scattered militia of Kentucky. During the next Winter, however, we find him again in Virginia; it is probable that his constant moving about had brought advantages, though his private affairs may have suffered more or less from neglect. The Spring of the next year he was back in Kentucky, and soon, in no uncertain way, the leader of the busy swarms of pioneers. "He was brave, energetic, bold," writes William H. English, "prepossessing in appearance, of pleasing manners, and in fact with all the qualities calculated to win from a frontier people. The unorganized and chaotic condition of the company needed such a man, and the man had come." It is interesting to notice the conflict which was precipitated between Clark as leader of the pioneers and Richard Henderson's Transylvania Company, and a pleasure to note that Clark never seemed to speak or act in a vindictive way with reference to Henderson's questionable purchase; in fact he wrote to his brother in 1775: "Colonel Henderson is here and claims all ye country below Kentucke. If his claim should be good, land may be got reasonable enough, and as good as any in ye world. My father talked of seeing this land in August. I shall not advise him whether to come or not; but I am convinced that if he once sees ye country he will never rest until he gets on it to live. I am ingrossing all ye land I possibly can, expecting him."