pip. N^o^' 2^5T' "^OHN H- KERR RESERVOIR BASIN — ^MILLER 



19 



Map 7. — Myer's map (after Swanton, 1928), showing Indian trails from Petersburg south- 

 ward to the Catawba territory. 



crossing in the vicinity of the great falls of the Roanoke was an 

 alternate route. 



Upon examining the literature dealing with the route of the Trad- 

 ing Path from Petersburg, Va,, down through North Carolina, it is 

 especially noticeable that most of the later writers assumed, or took 

 for granted, that Batts and Fallam were referring to a path that 

 passed through the islands located at the confluence of the Staunton 

 and Dan Rivers. This assmnption is untenable insofar as a study 

 of some of the early maps (Jefferys map of 1776), as previously indi- 

 cated, portrayed the path crossing the Roanoke River in the vicinity 

 of the great falls where a number of islands occur adjacent to Haw 

 Creek, and, as Meyer pointed out, "where it crossed the present line 

 between Virginia and North Carolina" (see map 8) . 



Bland (Alvord and Bidgood, 1912, p. 126) had this to say about 

 these islands : 



At the foot of these falls also lies two Islands in a great Bay, the uppermost 

 whereof Mr. Bland named Charles Island, and the Lowermost Captaine Wood 

 named Berkeley Island: . , . Charles Island is three miles broad, and four 

 miles long, and Berkeley Island almost as big, both in manner impregnable by 

 nature, being fortified with high clefts of Rocky Stone, and hardly pass- 

 able, . . . that that branch of Blandina River ran a great way up into the 



