White River Landing Ark. Sept the 8th 1864 My Dear Elizabeth I calmly seat myself to night under my newly fixed up litle tent with my paper on a litle cracker box & with a candle britly burning clerly at my side as if to assist me all in its power to write you a letter I shal not give you any pertickulars of our trip to night prefuring to leave that for future imployment tho I wil say that after 4 days on the steamer we arived here safe at this plase whare we have been imploid to day fixing up tents our camp is a few hundred yards below the mouth of White River & about 500 milds above Morganza thare is afew Negros living here but it is mostly woods as a thicket & swampy we get a mail to day & of late date showing that our letters wil come much quicker here than at Morganza I can not tel you how long we wil stay here thare is no rebels close here it is not more than 30 or 40 milds up to Helena Ark. this leaves me well & harty hoping to here from you soon John Clark was sick coming up but he tels me to day that he is geting well again I will write you a long letter as soon as I have time or chance So I close by subscribing my self your truly M A Hooker [reverse] M A Hooker Co A 87 Ills Mtd Inft Cavl Forses White River Landg Ark Patrick J. Anderson http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=patanderson 9654 Baltimore Avenue, Laurel, Maryland 20723