
          Rcvd. Feb. 10th

Utica January 30th 1837

Dear Sir,

I have duly considered the subject of your
proposition made me last August, since I received
your last letter of Dec 1st and have concluded to
engage in the enterprize if  any circumstances are such
as to warrant the attempt. I will here briefly inform
you that my circumstances as it respects means are
very limited, barely sufficient to furnish a home
and support, for my three little children, during
my expected absence. And all that I shall be able
to do, to furnish myself with the necessary aparatus
for the expedition, will be extremely limited; but,
I will cheerfully engage to perform with unremitting 
zeal, and industry, every thing that will render my services
as satisfactory as possible, to the utmost of my
ability.

The task I am aware, will be a laborious
one, necessarily attended with many privations and
inconveniences during its prosecution, but at this I
am not frightened. I am in a measure prepared
to encounter every hardship with fortitude, and content
myself with the prospect of satiating my eyes, with 
the innumerable beauties, of the vastly extended regions
through which I am to travel.

I wish you to inform me as soon as possible, how
soon it will be necessary for me to start, what rout
I am to take to St Louis, and where I am to obtain my
outfit.

In answer to these inquiries, and further
communications on the subject of my proposed journey
will be matter of some importance to me, for
if I should not go, I wish to look about elsewhere
to establish myself in business. Several opportunities
have been suffered to pass by unimproved,
because I had given encouragement to engage in
the proposed expedition.

With regard to preparatory
reading I have improved every opportunity
of my leisure hours to become acquainted with
situations and productions of the western country.
I have read Long's Expedition and some other travels,
On Natural History I have consulted Goldsmith
Gadman and others, on Botany every thing in my
reach. Gray's Elements are not to be found in
Utica I regret that I have not seen the work.

I have not yet procured for you many specimens
of sections of wood for two reasons, one is 
I have been out of town since you requested
me to procure them, another the trees of this region
are very little different from those in almost any
part of the state I have ever visited, except that this
vicinity furnishes the Liriodendron, Thuja, Nyssa, and a 
few others.

These I will endeavour to procure & some others.

Yours in haste

P. D. Knieskern
        