I went to Natchitoches today to access Ellicott's journal in the Watson Library
at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. NSU does indeed have two copies,
one of the original 1803 edition and one of the 1962 reprint.

The 1803 version is a large chunk of a book, about three inches thick with many
fold-out maps scattered through it. I handled and read it with awe! The book
had once been part of the private library of the lady after whom the special
research collections room is named. It had prices of $1 and $10 written in
brown ink inside its covers. (Didn't we see one a couple of days ago that was
selling on the web for $4,000?) When it came to making photocopies of a few of
the maps, I switched to the reprint, not wanting to subject the ancient edition
to that kind of handling. The reprint has the maps reproduced smaller on
regular book pages, all of them in the back, but an enlarging copy machine
produced useable results.

The book covers Ellicott's dealings with the Spanish, reproduces his official
letters, and details his techniques. He gives us his astronomical observations
and mathematical calculations, tells us the temperatures each day, and recounts
every time he wound or cleaned his clock. Unfortunately for our purposes, he
leaves most of the details of his product, the line itself, to his field notes.
The strip maps of the line, though, do show each numbered mile and many of the
stream courses that cross it, a few of them named. With some study, I should be
able to correlate with modern maps to determine sites worthy of inspection.

I will keep the group informed as such study evolves.

Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA