My Dear Wife,

It will give you great pleasure to be informed the Mr. Douglass, Dudley and myself have enjoyed perfect health since we came hither. As to our progress, we can say nothing but good things– though our hands are so few & everything is in such rude state as to exhibit little besides the incipient footsteps of the Lion-like work we have no undertaken. The Well, you know, was the first thing to be attended to. As soon, therefore, as we could get the thick bushes so far cleared away as to enable us to see the light of Heaven above and face of the ground beneath, the men were ordered to begin the herculean task of sinking a well, & finding water on this lofty ground. This makes the third day we have spent, and we have dug eleven feet, a great part of which is through a rock. This becoming harder and harder, I have resolved to commence the use of an auger; apparatus of this kind is to be set in motion, so that I hope by the middle of next week to see this work of boring by horse power commenced in rapid style.

...We have built a tent-cabin, and if we had anyone to cook for us we should live. It is impossible to make the hands find themselves; we must find provisions ourselves, or have none to help us...Judge Holmes has been here for 3 days, and is now engaged in surveying the north Section. The streets & roads on this the south section have been laid out as far as can be till We find Water.

I write by a poor dim hogs lard lamp, which, shining askance on my paper, will hardly permit me to say how faithfully I m your affectionate Husband.