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Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL

 In the woods, Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL, December 13, 2007
In the woods, Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL, December 13, 2007

No boat traffic, except for a fisherman, casting for catfish I guess, and a muskrat resting on the opposite point (where the great blue heron was yesterday morning). No fog either. Today is shaping up to a sunny day in the seventies. We like it. Later I might take a walk along the trails down at the lower pool below the lock. Gotta go, my oatmeal is ready.

Night camp

Site 42 - Foscue Creek Campground, Demopolis AL

The Heliograph in the Apache Wars

"The mountains and the sun...were made his allies, the eyes of his command, and the carriers of swift messages. By a system of heliograph signals, communications were sent with almost incredible swiftness; in one instance a message traveled seven hundred miles in four hours. The messages, flashed by mirrors from peak to peak of the mountains, disheartened the Indians as they crept stealthily or rode swiftly through the valleys, assuring them that all their arts and craft had not availed to conceal their trails, that troops were pursuing them and others awaiting them. The telescopes of the Signal Corps, who garrisoned the rudely built but impregnable works on the mountains, permitted no movement by day, no cloud of dust even in the valleys below to escape attention. Little wonder that the Indians thought that the powers of the unseen world were confederated against them."

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