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The First Survey Through Hal's Lake Swamp Page 13
about on both those points, thus indicating that the "crescent lake" was what we now know as Hal's Lake.
The next day:75
We heard the sound of Powell and Crane's horn in a northwestwardly direction from us, answering them, they join us and become our pilots to their camp where we take breakfast and ascertain that the lake curves gradually to the N.W. and that our mile post list noted is about 30 chains east of its eastern most verge. We direct Powell to continue up the lake about one mile, and returning to the milepost, we continue our north course.76
In all likelihood Powell was then canoeing on a lake not named on the maps, but is in T3N, R1E, §13, which connects to an unnamed creek or creeks which at both ends flows into the Tombigbee just across the river from Bilbo Island, and just across the river from Bates Lake in Washington County.
When this lake petered out to the west, they started looking more to the north, where [what we call] Hal's Lake lies, on October 5th writing in the Journal that:
Finding the course of this lake diverge from that of our line too much to make it useful to continue the canoe any longer in it, and learning from Mr. Powell that a creek or arm of Bates Lake, more north extends further to the East than this, we direct him to return to the river and ascend that arm of Bates Lake to the point which he may judge we shall approach it nearest by a continuation of the present course, and returning to. . . [the last mark] we continue our course due north. . . .
That "creek or arm of Bates Lake" they were seeking must have been Hal's Lake; nothing else fits. What we today call "Bates Lake", of course, is west of the Tombigbee, but it was not uncommon in those days for creeks with a single name to come into a river from both sides, witness Bassett's Creek.
Late the afternoon of Thursday, October 5th, the Wailes survey party reached the south bank of what was probably an offshoot of what we now call Hal's Lake:
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75October 4, 1809.
76p. 168.
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