resting our animals a few days. Mr. Hoffman's folks are all well and tolerably well satisfied. They have bought one of the best claims in this valley with a very good one story frame house on it. I have been to the house several times. They have received several People's Friends and I could not stop till I had read them all, and May has Ann's likeness [daguerreotype?], which does me so much good to look at it once a day.
Mines are not doing much here or at Yreka on account of water. It has been a very open winter with the exception of last week which was very cold. We were on the road to Yreka with provisions, freight from Jacksonville, but the weather is pleasant again. The roads are muddy. There is a great deal of wheat being sowed in this valley this season. Farmers are going to do well next summer. There are two grist mills going up in this valley this summer.
Doctor McKinnell is practicing and doing well. He says he has twenty-five cases at present and is successful with all cases as yet.... I saw the Old Man Lawson ten days ago. He was well and had received the miniatures of his children which pleased him very much. His gold claim had not turned out as much as he expected and [he] said he would not return to the States in the Spring. Frank Wilcox is mining near Mr. Lawson. He had received news of the death of his Father, which makes him homesick.
I have to write you something that I don't know how to get around to tell you. I wrote that I was coming home in the Spring which I think I will. We have been speculating in wheat which may keep us till fall but if we can sell out at a good price in the Spring I will come home. I will give you an account of our stock in trade, the way we stand today. We have eleven mules, one horse, and rigging ready to pack worth $1500.00, and seventy acres of wheat sowed of which we get half delivered in the sack. Allowing that to average twenty Bu to the acre (which is the lowest estimation for this country) it will bring us seven hundred Bu of wheat, which will not be worth less than four dollars pr Bu. . . . It has taken all the ready cash to get the wheat, but we have debts standing out to the amount of two hundred dollars, and we owe no debts to any one. It is a time of year that we can get freight and we need not stop our
