Transcription:
4 and the barn yard at hand with its old strawstack and street of dilapidated stables and sheds, with cows, dirty children,
and broken plows sprinkled over all. But judge Emily of our sur- prise when upon a piece of ground where the bluffs had curved
backward a little from the river we at once seen the illegible old house with four gandily dressed females in an even row
in front with two idle men seated a little to one side looking complacently upon them like a successful merchant upon a stock
of newly arrived goods, not a broken fence dirty boy or squealing pig was to be seen but there on such a back ground the old
decaying logs and the dark majestic hills on which the soft shades of evening were beginning to fall. Near? in clothes which
had been dipped many times in most glaring dyes sat the strange four? . It was long before I could judge of the character
of the establishment but I saw at once there was something very strange about it and instinctively fell behind my companion
he was equally ignorant but boldly marched forward and asked for the glen where fossils were found This was a subject of which
they new but little. They told us that the path wen sic no farther - that the hills were unclimbable, etc We then took the
alarm - gained the summit of the bluffs after an hours hard labor - built our camp fire congratulated each other on our escape
and spoke much from the first chap of Proverbs 1 Sideways at top of page you will perhaps soon hear from us again through?
your family JM Fountain Lake Feb 27th /64 Dear Friend Emily You speak in your last letter of the pleasure which a letter
written during the ramble would have given but it is not yet too too late. Backward roll? backward O time in your flight
Recess in the bluffs near MacGregor illegible July 7th 1863 Dear friend Emily This evening finds us encamped near McGregor,
we have spent a toilsome day, but it has not been without interest. In the morning we were di- rected to a romantic glen down
which a little stream sought a path, turning the mosses to stone as it went, and watering many interesting flowers. The road
that leads to it , said the man