The bank of the river where I met Peter and Levin is two miles from the plantation.  I have avoided saying I am from Philadelphia.  Also avoided talking about negroes.  I never talked so much about milling before.  I consider most of the trouble over, till I arrive in a free State with my crew, the first week in March; then will I have to be wiser than Christian serpents, and more cautious than doves.  I do not consider it safe to keep this letter in my possession, yet I dare not put it in the post-office here; there is so little business in these post-offices that notice might be taken.

I am evidently watched; everybody knows me to be a miller.  I may write again when I get to Cincinnati, if I should have time.  The ex-magistrate, with whom I stayed in South Florence, held three hours’ talk with me, exclusive of our morning talk.  Is a man of good general information; he was exceedingly inquisitive.  “I am from Cincinnati, formerly from the State of New York.”  I had no opportunity to get anything to eat from seven o’clock Tuesday morning till six o’clock Wednesday evening, except the hoe cake, and no sleep.

Florence is the head of navigation for small steamboats.  Seven miles, all the way up to my place of departure, is swift water, and rocky.  Eight hundred miles to Cincinnati.  I found all things here as Peter told me, except the distance of the river.  South Florence contains twenty white families, three warehouses of considerable business, a post-office, but no school.  McKiernon is here waiting for a steamboat to go to New Orleans, so we are in company.

Princeton, Gibson county, Indiana, feb. 18, 1851.

To Wm. Still:—­The plan is to go to Canada, on the Wabash, opposite Detroit.  There are four routes to Canada.  One through Illinois, commencing above and below Alton; one through to North Indiana, and the Cincinnati route, being the largest route in the United States.

I intended to have gone through Pennsylvania, but the risk going up the Ohio river has caused me to go to Canada.  Steamboat traveling is universally condemned, though many go in boats, consequently many get lost.  Going in a skiff is new, and is approved of in my case.  After I arrive at the mouth of the Tennessee river, I will go up the Ohio seventy-five miles, to the mouth of the Wabash, then up the Wabash, forty-four miles to New Harmony, where I shall go ashore by night, and go thirteen miles east, to Charles Grier, a farmer, (colored man), who will entertain us, and next night convey us sixteen miles to David Stormon, near Princeton, who will take the command, and I be released.

David Stormon estimates the expenses from his house to Canada, at forty dollars, without which, no sure protection will be given.  They might be instructed concerning the course, and beg their way through without money.  If you wish to do what should be done, you will send me fifty dollars, in a letter, to Princeton, Gibson county, Inda., so as to arrive there by the 8th of March.  Eight days should be estimated for a letter to arrive from Philadelphia.