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It is now some more than four weeks since I began upon the Survey. It was certainly rather a difficult situation to put a Young Engineer with so little Experience as I had into. It worried me a good deal at first; I used to dream of the Mountains & Lakes, & curves and grades &c. &c. all the night. However I believe I have got along very well; certainly far exceeding my own expectations and I believe to the full satisfaction of my Employers and chiefs. We shall probably get through the Field Work of the Survey nearly in two weeks more. Then perhaps there will be a month or two of Office Work to collate & arrange the facts obtained & draw the Plans & Profiles, and to make out estimates. It is to be considered that this Survey which I have had the honor of making is a line through word crossed out the most difficult part of New Hampshire, a regular Mountain route. Route by way of Sunapee Mountain & Lake, and among other difficulties? involving quite a tunnel. If it had been a rich Company, the Engineer selected to make the Survey would have been one with the highest & most established reputation in the country. Instead you see being poor, they select a promising Sub, in whom they have full confidence!!! There is some splendid scenery in this country. I never saw anything like it before. Mountains & Lakes are thrown together most promiscuously on all sides. Sunapee Lake is a most splendid sheet of water, stretching round some ten or fifteen miles long among the mountains. Our Summit is a ridge of Rock connecting two mountains & extending across at the End of the Lake. Our Rail Road will make a great hole through it! The Lake is beautiful, clear & transparent as spring water. How I love to play in its Waves & miniature Surf these fine windy evenings. It has been rather a wild rude country we have been in mostly. The little old churches in the "Villages" have Free Will Baptist or Christian preaching once in four weeks or two weeks. Newport where we now are is quite a busy thriving little place on Sugar River, with Water priveliges, is the Shiretown of Sullivan Co.