My thoughts were employed upon home. A
thousand phantoms passed through my head. I tried to imagine how you
were employed at this moment, whether busy, or sick in your own room. It
would require a volume to trace my wandering thoughts. Let it suffice
that another day is nearly gone, and it has lessened the distance which
separated us, about seventy miles.
_28th_. I encamped, last night, near a large village of Winnebagoes and
Menomonies. They complained to me of want of food and ammunition. I
distributed among them a quantity of powder, ball, and shot, and some
bread, hard biscuit, pork, and tobacco. Never were people more grateful,
and never, I believe, was a more appropriate distribution made. I had
purchased these articles for the Chippewa Nation, to be used on my
contemplated voyage home, from the Prairie, through Chippewa River and
Lake Superior, before the design of going that way was relinquished. The
fact was, I could get no men to go that way, so alarmed were they by the
recent murder of Finley and his party.
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