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Ian W. Brown
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investigating whatever he had discovered that interested him (Sydnor 1938:185).
For example, on April 10, 1852, Wailes writes, ?Engaged in the afternoon closely, with the aid of Mr. J. P. Stewart, the clerk, and Mr. Whitney the deputy Sheriff in tracing on map of the county the public roads sites of towns, churches, post offices, mounds, quarries of rock, etc.? (Brown 1996:5).
Wailes also took advantage of local collectors for information. Anyone who has spent much time in the field will sympathize with Wailes? experience in the following encounter with an obnoxious, secretive collector from Grand Gulf, revealed in his diary entry for April 24, 1853:
Left Grand Gulf; met Mr Patrick. His cabinet was boxed up. Showed a catalogue of it. With evident reluctance showed me a few specimens; very common and trifling in character. He wants to sell per catalogue. The reports of Dr Pr[Tr?]OOST?' which he says he has could not be found. Mr Patrick had visited me and spent the day and had a full inspection of my cabinet, and I had been very earnestly pressed to visit him and to stay with him at Grand Gulf. He excused himself from offering me the hospitality of his house on some pretext which I paid little attention to, but he stuck to me like a leach and I could with difficulty shake him off when I returned to my lodgings at the Cottage Hotel (Brown 1996:22).
Throughout Wailes? journals there are many drawings of Indian mounds and site plans. Sometimes these were based on linear measurements and triangulation (4/2/52), but others were simply made by eye (Sydnor 1938:181-82). Occasionally he experimented with new techniques, as on April 8, 1852, when he ?Wrote letters to Mr. Smith, State Librarian, and invited Jacquith, daguerractypist to accompany me in an examination of the mounds, and take views (Brown 1996:5).?
Wherever Wailes went, he was a stickler for historical detail. It seems that he could not pass up the opportunity to establish the history and genealogy of the landowners of the sites he visited. A good example is his encounter with Rev. John G. Jones of the Washington area:
? This is probably Gerard Troost, State Geologist of Tennessee in the mid-nineteenth century (Jeffrey Brain, personal communication, 1998; Kennedy 1994:65).