________________________________________The First Survey Through Hal's Lake Swamp Page 12
began to run due north, returning in the evening to their camp on Nannahubba Island on the south bank of the cut-off.71
Second Failure at Sighting Fires in the North Makes the Job Look Tougher Than They Thought. From Saturday, September 30, to Monday, October 2, which had mild mornings and was generally hazy, Wailes posted "a regular look out", including several at the agreed hours "in the tops of tall trees", but they saw nothing, "except of a broad smoke about the horizon in the north from which no direction could be taken".72
The next day, October 3, Wailes sent his boat to split the provisions, part at Mr. Wilsons,73 "and the residue at a Major Christmas', to be convenient to supply us on our way up the ridge."
The rest of the Wailes party took their own packs and crossed to the north bank of the cut-off to continue the survey line north and to move the camp to the north bank.
That evening William Thornton arrived, an "express" [messenger] from Mr. Dinsmoor, with Dinsmoor's letter of October 2, which advised that the fires were built at the proper times and made "a grand appearance"; Wailes wrote "our failing to discover them gives us reason to apprehend that the distance through the swamp is greater than it has generally been estimated at."74
"The Crescent Lake". Silas Dinsmoor, who had been talking with and meeting people in the area, then broached the subject of "the crescent lake":
Mr. Dinsmoor also informs, that hearing of a Lake in the form of a crescent extending into the swamp from the Tombigbee River, which will be likely to intercept our north course, he has employed James Powell to accompany Martin Crane in a canoe up the lake to enable us more conveniently to explore it and judge of the course that will pass between it and the Alabama waters. Powell is to sound a horn to direct us to him.5
The clearest "crescent" lake is what we now know as "Fishing Lake", mostly in T3N, R1E, §2, just east of the Tombigbee, due east of McIntosh, and northwest of the mouth of Hal's Lake on the Tombigbee. However, that lake -- however perfect a crescent shape it clearly is -- doesn't extend into the swamp "from the Tombigbee river", and it was not "likely to intercept [their] north course". James Powell, however, who lived there, was likely to know what he was talking
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70p. 166.
71p. 167.
72Wilsons still own land on the Washington County side just south of the cut-off.
73p. 167.
74p. 167. Powell apparently lived within a few miles of Hal's Lake, p. 176.
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