others. Mr. Holdham, an Episcopal clergyman, with his family—nice people—has been engaged by the settlement as pastor and teacher. I am going to reserve land for a church, cemetery, and school-house. Thus, you see, my sweet wife, colonization is a fact, not a chimera. By the time these lands are paid for they will be worth, even if no more settlers come to the Empire, $20, $30, or even $100 the acre, for they produce everything under the sun, and yield perpetual harvests.
What do you think of coffee growing wild, of fig-trees 100 feet high and three feet in circumference, and the most luscious pine-apples at a cent apiece?
Now, if I can get Corbin here on one of these old Haciendas, he would, with his skilful husbandry, make it bud and blossom again. There is a great rush for this settlement, and it is here that Dick wanted to go; but as he was my son, I advised him against it, because there are not lands enough there for all who want them. However, I am going to extend the settlement, and then Corbin and Nannie can come in, as well as Dick and the rest.
Lafayette Caldwell, who used to be draughtsman at the Observatory, has sent for his family, Newmarket for his, and there are a number of nice families already there, some of them established in the city; but those are all going to break up and go down to the new, dear old Spottsylvania.
Now, if I can only get lands surveyed in time—for there are plenty of them—here is your "New Virginia." There are other settlements forming in other parts of the Empire. Colonization is a success, if we can only get instruments and surveyors to bring the land into market. The people of the South are restrained by political considerations from speaking of their intentions; but we have letters. Thousands are dying to come; and I hope to have a decree this week which will put them in motion.
28th.—My hands are getting so full, and my time so liable to interruptions, that I cannot write as often or as fully as I used to do; but my heart is always full of letters to you—piled up, pressed down, and running over with loves, and the most tender solicitude. . . .
