My dear friend,

    After a great variety of accidents by flood and field, I arrived at this place the latter end of January. I have been boat wrecked, twice upset in the stage and exposed at different times to hardships and privations, which the silken sons of fortune reclining on the couch of luxurious ease, would shrink to encounter. Yet to me the wilderness through which I have roamed has had no terrors, for the objects I have had in mind were sufficiently great to banish the idea of peril and fatigue. I have explored the western wilds in almost every direction, and am fully convinced, from the uncommon luxuriance of its soil, the great navigable waters with which it abounds and a genial climate which whilst it fructifies the earth, exhilarates the spirits and activates the industry of men, that it will ere long rival the Atlantic states in literature, the liberal arts, and all the refined amusements which add a zest to social life and far surpass it in wealth and population. No cultivator of the soil whose eye once rests upon this fertile tract of earth ever turns it backward, nor does his heart ever sigh for the comparatively barren spot he has left, scarcely sufficient with incessant toil, to yield him a scanty subsistence.

    It is literally a fact that the Western country is inundated with emigrants from all nations and particularly from the Eastern states. Ohio can now boast of a population of half a million. The Illinois Ter’y received last year an increase of 20,000 inhabitants and will in all probability contain 100,000 in a twelvemonth. I have become so largely concerned in land speculations, that it will be some time before I shall be able to return to New York. I have been for some time past been busily engaged in laying off a Town in Illinois, and bids fair to become the capital. The people of the Atlantic States have no conception of the extreme fertility of the land West of the Mts. and the facilities of amassing immense wealth with moderate means. If lands continue to rise as they have done. I have a quantity in my possession, sufficient to assure me in a very few years, a splendid fortune.

    I regret that my numerous avocations will not permit me to give you a detailed escort of my journey or the objects of interest that attracted my attention. In order to explore the Western country thoroughly my route was circuitous. I penetrated in various directions the States of Ohio and Kentucky.

    The number of well built towns and the great agricultural improvements which everywhere presented themselves excited my surprise and admiration. Cincinnati and Lexington have all the appearance of Atlantic Cities in miniature and contain the very best society—particularly the latter in which hospitality goes hand in hand with literature and refinement.

    The principal curiosities of the Western Country are the mounds and prairies. The former are extremely numerous, ten or twelve are frequently to be found in a district of 6 miles square, the latter are sometimes hundreds of miles in extent. My impression is that the former were the burying places of a race of men, far more civilized than any savage tribe now extant and that the latter are artificial meadows produced by burning the woods, centuries ago, these conflagrations have left spots of earth on which neither a tree or a shrub is to be found. Should I find leisure I will hereafter give you a minute description of these curiosities with the reasons which have led me to form the opinion I have here advanced. My best respects to Dr. Hosack J. Smith and friends.

    I remain with sentiments of respect and esteem.

                                Your sincere friend,

                                Sam G. Berrian.