1
There is no large island in either the Coosa or the Chattahoochee, and we are
forced to the conclusion that what the chronicle describes as an island was really a
portion of the bottom land temporarily cut off by back water from a freshet. In a
similar way "The Slue," east of Flint river in Mitchell county, may have been
formed by a shifting of the river channel. Two months later, in Alabama, the
Spaniards reached a river so swollen by rains that they were obliged to wait six
days before they could cross (Elvas). Lederer, while crossing South Carolina in
1670, found his farther progress barred by a "great lake," which he puts on his map
as "Ushery lake," although there is no such lake in the state; but the mystery is
explained by Lawson, who,farther down,
there is still to be seen another of nearly equal size. "At extreme freshets both of
these mounds were partly submerged. To the east of the former, known as the
Indian mound, the flood plain is a mile or two wide, and along the eastern side of
the plain stretches a series of swamps or wooded sloughs, indicating an old river bed.
All the plain between the present river and the sloughs is river-made land. The
river bluff along by the mound on the Georgia side is from twenty to thirty feet above
tlie present low-water surface of the stream. About a mile above the mound arc the
remains of what was known as Jennies island. At ordinary stages of the river no
island is there. The eastern channel was blocked by government works some
years