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MISSISSIPPI A RCHAEOLOC Y
fieldwork is incredible. One can only imagine what energy he must have had twenty years earlier when he was tramping around the woods of the Natchez region.
Benjamin?s love for the outdoors and his sensitivity to his natural surroundings may have come from his father. Levin Wailes moved his family to Washington in 1807 because of the need for able surveyors in a region that was soon to be divided up into numerous plantations (Clark and Guice 1989:201; Ellicott 1962; Hamilton 1899; Haynes 1962; McLaurin 1974; Rowland 1907, 1:673?75; Rowland 1925, 1:395?96; Sydnor 1938:35, 37; White 1902:261). Benjamin himself learned surveying skills between 1814 and 1815, when he served as a clerk in the Washington office of Thomas Freeman. These skills came in handy over the years. Between 1826 and 1835 Benjamin was the register of the land office at Washington, a job that certainly increased his knowledge of the soil and geography of southwest Mississippi (Rowland 1907, 1:749-50; Sydnor 1938:52, 54, 87).
Considering the topographic relief of the Natchez region, getting from one place to the next was no easy achievement. Between 1841 and 1855, Benjamin Wailes estimated he rode about 12,000 miles over the dirt roads of Mississippi, primarily during his agricultural and geological surveys. In just six months of travel in 1852 he traveled 1953 miles and spent $250.37. He sometimes rode with his servant in a Jersey wagon and sometimes in a carriage, but his favorite vehicle was a sulky. Occasionally he used the public stage, but he hardly ever used the train. In traveling back and forth between his Washington home and the Warren County plantations that he managed to the north, he found it most expedient to go by boat. Boats were certainly the best way to travel in terms of comfort. Once, while traveling on the vessel ?Alice Vivian? during a flood, Wailes was amused to learn that the craft was commanded by a certain Captain Noah (Sydnor 1938:259? 61, 266-67, 274).
Wailes adopted a basic plan of investigation during his whirlwind tour of the various Mississippi counties during the Geological Survey:
Wailes? plan for field work was to supply himself with sketch maps, drawn on a scale of three miles to the inch, of each county he planned to enter. Reaching a given county, he spent the first day at the Courthouse, where, with the aid of local maps, the assessor?s books and oral information, he corrected his map and added further details. The following days he spent