Many little adaptations were necessary, and while these things were being done we spent a couple of weeks very agreeably, in partaking of the hospitalities of the place.

My correspondence now began to accumulate, and I took this occasion of a little pause to attend to it.

The publication of my work on the mines had had the effect to awaken attention to the varied resources of the Mississippi Valley, and the subject of geographical and geological explorations.

It also brought me a class of correspondents who are simply anxious for practical information, and always set about getting it in the most direct way, whether they are personal or introduced acquaintances or not.

I determined at once to reply to these, wherever they appeared to be honest inquiries for geographical facts, which I only, and not books, could communicate.
Mr.Robert Bright, of Charleston, S.C., an English emigrant, having got a copy of my work, wrote (Jan.