Whitesides, for Yellow Banks, where the boats with provisions had been
ordered to meet them. It was arduous marching. There were no roads and
no bridges, and the day's task included a great deal of labor. The
third day out they came to the Henderson River, a stream some fifty
yards wide, swift and swollen with the spring thaws, with high and
steep banks. To most armies this would have seemed a serious obstacle,
but these backwoodsmen swarmed to the work like beavers, and in less
than three hours the river was crossed with the loss of only one or
two horses and wagons. When they came to Yellow Banks, on the
Mississippi, the provision-boats had not arrived, and for three days
they waited there literally without food; very uncomfortable days for
Governor Reynolds, who accompanied the expedition, and was forced to
hear the outspoken comments of two thousand hungry men on his supposed
inefficiency. But on the 6th of May the _William Wallace_ arrived, and
"this sight," says the Governor with characteristic sincerity, "was, I
presume, the most interesting I ever beheld." From there they marched
to the mouth of Rock River, and thence General Whitesides proceeded
with his volunteers up the river some ninety miles to Dixon, where
they halted to await the arrival of General Atkinson with the regular
troops and provisions. There they found two battalions of fresh
horsemen under Majors Stillman and Bailey, who had as yet seen no
service and were eager for the fray. Whitesides's men were tired with
their forced march, and besides, in their ardor to get forward, they
had thrown away a good part of their provisions and left their baggage
behind. It pleased the Governor, therefore, to listen to the prayers
of Stillman's braves, and he gave them orders to proceed to the head
of Old Man's Creek, where it was supposed there were some hostile
Indians, and coerce them into submission. "I thought," says the
Governor in his memoirs, "they might discover the enemy."