While Ellicott was at Pensacola, with Colonel Hawkins, trying to arrange with the Spanish commandant to secure the neutrality of the Creeks, his party pushed the line forward from the Mobile to the Escambia and Coenecuh Rivers above their junction. The matter of the Indians was never satisfactorily arranged, but the survey proceeded. On the Coenecuh, however, he notes that the more pressing enemies were flies and "musquitoes," which made every observation a matter of great pain. Among these was the transit of Mercury in May, 1799. Thereafter they crossed the White Cedar Creek, Yellow Waters, and between the 321st and 334th miles crossed and re-crossed the larger Choctaw River, now the Choctawhatchee, and its branch, the Pea River. Between that and the Chattahoochee were a number of streams and lakes, but he names only the Waters of Chapully (Chipola River.) In fact, little or no account is given of this part of the survey, as Ellicott was not in the party. He sailed from Pensacola and finally met the others on the Chattahoochee.
There he was surrounded by hostile Indians and had difficulty establishing in September 1799 the mound at the junction of the Flint. He then left the party and went by sea around Florida to the St. Mary's, while Gillespie apparently worked overland to the sources of that river. There, as at the beginning of the Mississippi, Ellicott built a terminal mound.
But at the Chattahoochee, 381 miles from the Father of Waters, ended Mississippi Territory. And there we must bid adieu to Ellicott and the south line alike of Mississippi and of Alabama. Spain retired below that line in 1798-9, and before 1820 the United States had acquired the territory south of it even to the Gulf. As a boundary between countries the parallel of 31° has become obsolete; but the Quaker's work in running out the old British line still remains important, for it separates much of Mississippi from Louisiana and much of Alabama from Florida. The stone on Mobile River is only a point of departure in surveying; but the mounds on the Mississippi, the Chattahoochee and St. Mary's bound civilized States instead of savage hunting grounds, as when they were made, and one at least still bears Ellicott's name.
FOOTNOTES:
[143] Colonial Mobile, pp. 185, 294; 7 Statutes at Large, p. 55.
[144] 4, Am. Hist. Rev. p. 62, &c.; 7 Stat. at Large, p. 140.
[145] Ellicott's Journal, pp. 40, 177.
[146] But at least he did not turn cannon on Gayoso and compel him to evacuate, as stated (p.[45]) in Jones' Introduction of Protestantism.
[147] Ellicott's Journal, pp. 141, 282.