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Isaac Mr Hawkins Ill Aug 2 1851 Mr. Hawkins, Perry Co. Ill Aug. 2. 1851 Dear Antoinette Your kind & excellent letter was received yesterday, and with very great pleasure I assure you. It had been so long since I heard from you; and I was getting very impatient, and anxious. And I have not yet heard from home, Mother, Brother, or Sister. Letters had a little farther to go there you know than to you which would make the answers one or two days later, but I shall now expect them next mail at any rate. I am very much obliged to you for writing immediately on the receipt of my letter. A single day when one is waiting is a good while. I should have written the day I received yours, but that there is no mail until Monday. As you may imagine, I have by this time had considerable experience of Life among the Suckers. I have certainly learned a good many new things. We have made a survey 50 miles through Southern Illinois. I can tell you so you can trace our course on the map. If on your maps the Base Lines & Meridians of the N.I. Government Land Surveys are laid down, it is easily traced. We commenced where the "Third Principal Meridian", {which is nearly the Meridian of Cairo & Vandalia} crosses Big Muddy River in Jackson County, and run Northerly through Jackson Perry & Washington Counties to the "Base Line" which is thirty of forty miles south of Vandalia. The whole distance, eastern people would think almost uninhabited; they call it here pretty well settled, which means simply that there is an occasional Farm, say from one to twelve miles apart I think that in the fifty miles we did pass within ten miles