leaving the town was in all
probability the main chain of the Blue ridge, while the river which they found after
descending to the savanna on the other side, and which they guessed to be a branch
of the Mississippi, was almost as certainly the upper part of the French Broad, the
first stream flowing in an opposite direction from those which they had previously
encountered. They may have struck it in the neighborhood of Hendersonville or
Brevard, there being two gaps, passable for vehicles, in the main ridge eastward
from the first-named town. The uninhabited mountains through which they strug-
gled for several days on their way to Chiaha and Coca (the Creek country) in the
southwest were the broken ridges in which the Savannah and the Little Tennessee
have their sources, and if they followed anIndian trail they may have passed through
the Rabun gap, near the present Clayton, Georgia. Guaxule, and hot Xuala, as Jones
supposes, was in Nacoochee valley, in the present White county, Georgia, and the
small streams which united to form the river down which the Spaniards proceeded
to Chiaha were the headwaters of the Chattahoochee. The hill upon which the
townhouse was built must have been the great Nacoochee mound, the most promi-
nent landmark in the valley, on the east bank of Sautee creek, in White county,
about twelve miles northwest of Clarkesville. This is the largest mound in upper
Georgia, with the exception of the noted Etowah mound near Cartersville, and is the
'only one which can fill the requirements of the case. There are but two consider-
able mounds in western North Carolina, that at