He was of good Virginian family. Early in his youth, he embarked
on the adventurous career of a backwoods surveyor, exactly as
Washington and so many other young Virginians of spirit did at
that period. He traveled out to Kentucky soon after it was
founded by Boone, and lived there for a year, either at the
stations or camping by him self in the woods, surveying, hunting,
and making war against the Indians like any other settler; but
all the time his mind was bent on vaster schemes than were
dreamed of by the men around him. He had his spies out in the
Northwestern Territory, and became convinced that with a small
force of resolute backwoodsmen he could conquer it for the United
States. When he went back to Virginia, Governor Patrick Henry
entered heartily into Clark's schemes and gave him authority to
fit out a force for his purpose.

In 1778, after encountering endless difficulties and delays, he
finally raised a hundred and fifty backwoods riflemen. In May
they started down the Ohio in flatboats to undertake the allotted
task. They drifted and rowed downstream to the Falls of the Ohio,
where Clark founded a log hamlet, which has since become the
great city of Louisville.

Here he halted for some days and was joined by fifty or sixty
volunteers; but a number of the men deserted, and when, after an
eclipse of the sun, Clark again pushed off to go down with the
current, his force was but about one hundred and sixty riflemen.
All, however, were men on whom he could depend--men well used to
frontier warfare. They were tall, stalwart backwoodsmen, clad in
the hunting-shirt and leggings that formed the national dress of
their kind, and armed with the distinctive weapon of the