Box 2, Folder 7: Typewritten Letters, 1811-1828

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1826 & 1827.

service and am to go there also. Will go to the Jefferson Seminary, Mr. Mann Butler, teacher.

Jan'y 1827. Employed by Judge Bates as rodman on the Louisville and Portland canal under Judge Bates' son of Judge Bates. Am to go to school when not employed on the canal Rec'd a letter from Prof. B. Silliman.

New Haven, Conn. Dec. 27th, 1826.

Sir:

I write to acknowledge your letter of the 11th. *** and to thank you for the liberal spirit which you manifest in encouraging a work designed to promote the public good.

Your remittance will cover more than volume 12; I do not know what discount we must pay on Ohio money but believe it is 5 or 6 per cent.

Yours respectfully,

B. Silliman.

Mr. Lapham.

Feb. 12. The family arrived here from Lockport except Darius, who remains on the Welland canal. We are now living in the village of Shippingsport, two miles from Louisville.

Feb. 23. Left school today and commenced devoting my whole time to the canal.

Louisville, Feb. 27, 1827.

Respected Brother:

I received you letter of Feb. 5th, requesting me to write as soon as I got it, this monring [morning].

I am in good health, am not going to school, and commenced this day to draw $20.00 per month; having before now been paid by the day for every day I was out of school. ***

* The description of the Louisville and Portland canal is omitted here; it will be found on page 14 in letter to Prof.

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1827.

The contractors are to commence boating the stones up here tomorrow and father will commence laying them as soon as the water is down, which will probably be May or June.

You must not be homesick, if you are I would advise you to take a good dose of goodnature, mixed with 2/3 weight of content, if this is not sufficient, you are to double the dose, adding a little goodwill towards your friends and your affectionate brother,

I.A. Lapham.

D. Lapham. Hamilton O.

Shippingsport Ky. June 24th, 1827.

Dear Sir:

I acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 27th of Dec. and the first number of vol. 12 of the American Journal.***

If you want any information relating to the canal around the rapids of the Ohio, inform me, and I will cheerfully give you such information as I am capable of.

Very respectfully,

Increase A. Lapham.

New Haven.

Prof. B. Silliman.

New Haven July 22nd, 1827.

Dear Sir,

*** I shall be much obliged to you to give me any and every information in your power relative to the canal around the rapids of the Ohio, with permission to insert in the Journal of Science. Any other information which you may communicate will be acceptable, and I thank you for your disposition to increase the subscription of the Journal.

I remain yr. obt & oblgd. servt.

B. Sillman.

Mr. Lapham.

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1827.

Shippingsport, Aug. 5th, 1827.

Dear Brother Darius:

*** The name this place has of being sickly has not a good foundation, your conjecture does not apply, on account of the Ohio river being not so deadly a stream as you imagine.

The marsh [miasmata? word?] are given out before it gets here. Neither the extreme heat nor the extreme cold of this climate appears to produce many diseases by its direct operation.

The most obvious effects of the hot weather are oppression and lassitude in the muscles with a diminution of appetite all of which disappear on the concurrence of a cool day, and are [truly] readily distinguishable from similar affections produced by marsh misssmata. Few persons escape these complaints, but those who have emigrated from higher latitudes are of course the greatest sufferers. Variations of the temperature particularly from heat to cold are sometimes the exciting causes of intermitting and other favors produced by marsh exhalations. In this case, the presence of moisture renders the depression of temperature more injurious.

A few ponds back of Louisville are continually giving off marsh [effluvia?], and of course, the environs are more or less infected with the disease produced by them. These ponds will soon be drained, in fact, they are now being drained.

The great depressions of the Ohio in August and September expos to the sun a quantity of mud with trees and some animal matter in the state of decay; the exhalations from which are unquestionably prejudicial, a wharf which has been built at the river at low water and connected with the bank has augmented this cause by producing in high floods an eddy which annually deposits on the

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1827.

beach for nearly the whole length of the town a large quantity of filth and mud. Besides these all the domestic animals that die are thrown out on the commons between here and Louisville. These and dissipation are the principal causes of disease in this place.

I have got my botanical books and have commenced my botanical excursions, but I find some difficulty in placing the plants here under their proper generic names; perhaps I shall have to call on you for assistance as there are no botanists short of Cincinnati.

I have seen the Eupatorium perfoliatum growing on the upper part of Hog Island; but we do not want it for its medical properties at present as brother William has got rid of the fever and ague by the use of sulphate of quinine.

Your affectionate brother,

Increase A. Lapham.

Darius Lapham. Eng. St. Catherines, Upper Canada.

*** Note. While excavating the earth in the Louisville and Portland canal about nine feet above the rock a spring was discovered, which had a peculiar taste and bubbles of an inflammable gas were now and then seen raising through it. This gas was probably formed by the decaying vegetable matter which is found in the alluvium, for when they came to the rock the gas disappeared; but the spring still had its peculiar taste, which was ascribed to different ingredients by different persons.***

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Specimens in my collection numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4 were given me by Mr. Setton of Cincinnati in exchange for some I brought from Lockport New York Aug. 1826. Specimen No. 5 Calc. spar, I found in a quarry opened for the locks below Middleton, Ohio.*** The surface in

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1827.

many places if covered with this spar, sometimes to the thickness of [2 ft] several inches. It is quarried there and used in the construction of two or three locks of the Miami canal. The bed of the Miami river through which the canal passes is mostly made up of gravel covered with a thin stratum of black vegetable mould. When these pebbles are exposed, in constructing the canal, to the air, they become cemented by carbonate of lime, very strongly in a few days.

Mouth of Grand River,

Lake Erie July 25 1827.

[I.A. Lapham.]

Dear Brother:

It would seem to you amusing to see all the waters of the globe and all the loose materials that are scattered over its surface, start at once and, impelled by an exterior attraction over the surface of the earth, wearing down the tops of mountains and filling up immense valleys, forming ridges of fine earth, sand gravel and large rocks of great weight, intermixed without order, carrying primitive substances from their native places and depositing them where they are not known. Such would be the consequences, were a comet to pass so near the earth as to attract these substances and that one has passed over this part of the earth is evident from numerous circumstances and phenomena.***

In this principle of foreign attraction the explanation of these appearances is clear and consistent; every loose substance on the surface of the earth would be lifted and drawn along, and the rock which has been fastened down by gravitation, receiving a new and opposite impulse, would become as obedient as ferrugunous sand to the magnet.

The particles of clay could keep pace with the coarser materials of the hills and the great rock at Montezuma, estimated at 3,000 cub. ft. would move along with the sand that supports it.***

One plant of which I have heard David Thomas mention that he would like to get the seed is the Horse Chestnut which grows in Kentucky, the bo-