A vast swamp stretched as a barrier across the route and heavy rains made it impassable.
Hull had crossed the same swamp with his small force in the favorable summer season, but Harrison was unable to transport the food and war material needed by his ten thousand men.

A million rations were required at the goal of the Maumee Rapids, and yet after two months of heartbreaking endeavor not a pound of provisions had been carried within fifty miles of this place.

Wagons and pack-trains floundered in the mud and were abandoned.

The rivers froze and thwarted the use of flotillas of scows.

Winter closed down, and the American army was forlornly mired and blockaded along two hundred miles of front.