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Updated: June 22, 2025
It had been raining, and the island was fresh as if new made. Boats and bateaux, drawn up in a great semicircle about the crescent bay, had also been washed; but they kept the marks of their long voyages to the Illinois Territory, or the Lake Superior region, or Canada.
One of the birch canoes, although managed by a skillful voyageur, was twice upset, and one of the heavily loaded bateaux filled with water in a rapid. The result of the first accident was unimportant, except as respected the personal comfort of one of the party, who lost his clothing when it could not be replaced; the second accident caused the loss of some valuable stores.
Thus it happened that on the second of July twenty-four hundred and fifty men and officers received orders to embark for Montreal; and on the fifteenth they set sail, in thirty-two vessels, with a number of boats and bateaux.
These fairly swarmed with men loading and unloading ships and bateaux, and piling and unpiling goods. The Chevalier glanced with disdain at the magazines, and flourishing his cane, mounted leisurely the broad steps of the Palace, and was at once admitted to the council-room.
Captain Sinclair, having reported to the commandant and obtained permission, had launched one of the bateaux, manned by the soldiers, and had brought John and the punt on shore, about four miles below the fort, and not until they had arrived in the strong current of the rapids, which in another hour would have, in all probability, proved fatal.
The camp was broken up at five o'clock. Some of the troops embarked in bateaux, while others marched a mile and a half along the forest road, passed the place where the battalion of Berry was still at work on the breastwork begun in the morning, and made their bivouac a little farther on, upon the cleared ground that surrounded the fort.
There were nine hundred bateaux, a hundred and thirty-five whaleboats, and a large number of heavy flatboats carrying the artillery. The whole advanced in three divisions, the regulars in the centre, and the provincials on the flanks. Each corps had its flags and its music. The day was fair and men and officers were in the highest spirits.
Conversation was interrupted at this moment by the appearance of a beach suitable for a landing, and the heading of the boat toward it. A minute later it was run ashore, and the ladies were helped carefully out, while the remaining bateaux were beached on either side in quick succession.
It is well for us who now enjoy these blessings, the utilized ideas of a lifetime of unrequited labors, to look back upon the epoch of history so full of gloom for the men to whom we owe so much. At the beginning of the present century the navigation of the Ohio was limited to canoes, bateaux, scows, rafts, arks, and the rudest models of sailing-boats.
Although no big fragments of ice floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving thoroughfare of the river.
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