Alexander Robb, Nicola Lake, Canada to sister Susanna Robb.

		                                 Nicola Lake
                                 February 24th 1872
     My dear Sister
                   What can be the
matter with you that I have not heard
from you for so long I have been waiting
nearly all winter for a letter from you
always expecting one, and always being
dissapointed [disappointed?].  And since I have heard that
you are or have been so delicate, I am and
will be seriously uneasy unless I hear regularly
from yourself.  How I wish I could
transplant you here for the next six
months or as much longer as I could prevail
on you to stop.  Besides the comfort it would
be to me to have you near me I am satisfied
that a few months in this high altitude
and dry climate would completely restore
your health, diseases of the chest being a
thing almost unknown here, And what a
comfort it would be to me to have you with
me if for ever so short a time! for I am
afraid I am going to be very lonely now
I may perhaps have mentioned to you that
for these last eighteen months or so a
brother of my former partner and
his wife have been living with me.  I have
lately bought his farm and in a short time
he and his wife will be moving to a place
about twenty miles from here, so I expect
to be entirely alone.  It is true that my
old partner and his wife live only a little
over a mile from here but I am afraid I will
feel the want of company in the house
I will be very sorry too, to part with Mrs
Mickle (the woman who lives in the house
with me) she has been as kind to me as if
I had been her brother and I have come to
like her almost as well as if she were my
own sister.  Her husband is gone now to
put up a house on his new place and meanwhile
his wife and a little girl are stopping here
I expect they will all leave for good in
about two weeks.  This district is getting
to be quite settled up.  Three years and
one half ago there was not one white settler
within forty miles.  Now there are twenty
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five within less than half that distance
and we expect a further influx next Summer
A good many too of the settlers have got wifes [wives?]
and young families, which gives the place
something of a home look.  We have
had a very severe Winter here this year.  It set in
nearly a month earlier than usual and
we have had more snow and more cold than I
have seen for these last three years.  On Xmas [Christmas?]
day the thermometre [thermometer?] was down to thirty one
degrees below zero.  You cannot fancy what
such cold is but it may give you an idea
when I tell you that at fifteen degrees lower
mercury will frieze [freeze?] and strong brandy
will become as thick as syrrup [syrup?].  Had you
such weather in your damp climate I do not
believe anything could live but here we do
not feel it so badly.  It is however very lucky
that even here such extreme cold is rare
and never lasts longer than three or four days.