notorious that many constitutions, which had been so impaired by the unwholesome air of the lower country, that the physician's art could neither mend nor restore, have surprisingly recovered their vigor by a change of situation. May your removal to rural retreats and sylvan scenes be attended with the like happy effects!
A sound mind in a sound body, with a competent share of the comforts of life, is doubtless the highest pitch of happiness to which a reasonable man could aspire, till the desirable period arrive when He, who has so wonderfully connected and interwoven in one frame two such different and heterogeneous principles as flesh and spirit, shall think fit to dissolve the union, in order to that more perfect and glorious re-union which we expect to take place on that awful day, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal, immortality, and when Death, that scourge of guilt and enemy of our nature, shall be triumphantly swallowed up in victory.
Your command to let you know the distance and bearings between the several branches of our family and Williamsburg, and also between each other, I will execute as well as I am able, without the assistance of a pair of dividers, which I have not at present by me.
Mr. Fontaine, if I mistake not, lives near Bear Swamp, close on the southern branch of the North Anna, a northern branch of Pamunkey River, about 75 miles northwest from Williamsburg, and about 56 miles almost due east from hence, in the county of Hanover.
Mr. Claiborne is seated in the forks of Nottoway, in the county of Lunenburg, between ninety and a hundred miles distant from Williamsburg, by a course about two points to
