I think I wrote last (some years ago) from Howellsville We got into Buffalo (last Sunday in fact) & business opened at once & promisingly. We drove it & I got off Monday morning by Grand Trunk of Canada R. R. Reached Detroit late at night. All the way a dreary forest country, nearly all perfectly flat. The cars all furnished with all sorts of patent contraptions for producing drafts, one diabolical one passing through an ice box. I took a terrible cold which I have not yet worked out of. I was kept abed all of one day in Chicago with a fire in my room.

From Detroit on to Chicago next day. Country more agreeable with much swamp & fenny rivers and rolling uplands like the tamer parts of Central N. York. I was ill when I reached Chicago but to keep my engagment drove 20 miles over open prairie, bleak & raw wind, & walked a good deal. Next day could not speak easily & had to keep my bed. Friday another 20 miles drive but this time in a close carriage. Got back late. Saturday, conferences, debates, rough plans, treaties about terms consumed the time till we had to run for the train—Mich Southern. Slept on the train which is due this p. m. at 2 at the falls, but is running behind time. To-morrow we make an examination of the Buffalo ground & sketch outlines of a large scheme.

Tuesday I am to make a report to Committee & Wednesday may expect to leave for N. Y. The business at Chicago is very large—a private enterprise in which it is intended we shall put in services as partners or stockholders. They want to go to work at once & employ 2000 men. Contemplate expenditure for improvements of 1,500,000 dollars. The motive is like this: Chic. is on a dead flat. The nearest point having the slightest natural attractions is one about 9 miles straight back—West. It is a river (Aux Plaines) or creek 200 ft wide, flowing slowly on limestone bottom, banks generally sandy & somewhat elevated above the prairie level & about 10 ft above low water with sandy slopes & under water a little limestone debris. As a river not very attractive, but clean water 2 or 3 ft deep, banks & slopes rather ruggard & forlorn in minor detail but bearing tolerable trees—some very nice elms but generally oaks mostly dwarf. The sandy, tree-bearing land extends back irregularly, so that there is a good deal of rough grove land—very beautiful in contrast with the prairie and attractive. 1600 acres of land including a fair amount of this grove but yet mainly rich flat prairie have been secured, & the proprietors are now secretly securing land in a strip all the way to Chicago—for a continuous street approach—park-way. I propose to make the groves & river bank mainly public ground, by carrying a road with walks along it & to [267] plan village streets with “parks” & little openings to include the few scattered motes on the open ground. An excellent R. R. passes through it & a street R. R. parallel with the park way is projected.

The place has been somewhat resorted to by picnics & is now occupied by a famous stud farm with a training race track & is known as Riverside farm . They had proposed calling it Riverside Park but I objected & they told me to suggest a better. This I refer to you. The township is Lyons. The river should be the important circumstance as the centre of improvements. I am willing to make it a river park but not a park.

Please write me a name or some names. All the Old English river names are out of my head. River Groves is the best that has occurred to me but a more bosky word than grove would perhaps be better. They will build $100.000 of houses this fall.

If they will pay our terms or if we agree on special terms to take stock for pay or part pay—or land—I suppose I shall have to come out again before long—& all alone to make two big plans, one of them working plan & I really don’t see when I am to see you again.

Will you come down for a day or two soon if I can’t go?