Excerpts from "Travels in North America in the Years 1827 & 1828" by Captain Basil Hall, Royal Navy During his trip to North America in 1827-28, Captain Basil Hall, along with an Indian agent, traveled to "the country of the Creek Indians" and describes in great detail a "grand ball-play" and all the accompanying ceremonies. Describing the action of the game, Hall writes "…the Indian who got hold of the ball…with thirty or forty swift-footed fellows stretching after or athwart him, with their fantastic tigers’ tails streaming behind them…(he) sometimes tumbling at full length…but never losing hold of his treasure without a severe struggle…These parts of the game were exciting in the highest degree and it almost made the spectators breathless to look at them." Captain Hall illustrated his accounts of his travels with a camera lucida, a device invented in 1807 that allowed an artist to trace the outline of an object by means of a prism that projected its image onto a piece of paper or canvas.