P. S. Thank you for what you say of the Bedford gentleman. When I write next, I will mention him at greater length. I wish you could let me know whether we could procure first rate peach trees from your vicinity, and how much 50 of them would cost. I should like to have them assorted, soft, and clings yellow, or red, or blood-red. We wish to plant these as early in March as possible, if young trees, two years old could be had, we might, perhaps, have fruit on some of them during the next summer? Try what you can do for your New York friend. [The following on outside of letter-sheet] I will make up a box for you in a few days, and send it to you through Mr. Chevalier. Audubon, who ever found city life irksome, as early as 1841 had begun to look about for a farm, or some retired spot within easy access to New York, where he could establish the families of himself, of his two sons, and have about him many of the animals which he then wished to study and depict for his new work. Edward Harris would have been glad to have had him for a neighbor, and wrote from Moorestown, New Jersey, on July 5, 1841, suggesting that he examine "a small farm close to _his_ village, containing about 25 acres of very good land," which the owner was then willing to sell for $3,500, though, added Harris, "when Mr. Havell was here, he asked $5,000 for it." A spot more to his liking, however, was found on the Hudson River, in Carmansville, later known as Washington Heights, where he purchased from thirty to forty acres of land which had a river frontage of a thousand feet, from the present One Hundred and Fifty-fifth to One Hundred and Fifty-eighth Streets, and extended to the easterly limits of the village at the old Bloomingdale Road, near the present Amsterdam Avenue. This tract was well wooded, and among the grand forest trees on the place a large tulip or white wood attracted general attention from its great girth and commanding height. Audubon decided to place his house at the foot of the river bluff, amid a cluster of fine oaks, chestnuts and evergreens, and a clearing had to be made before the site could be laid off; it was some years before the railroad came to mar his river view and interrupt access to the beach. Audubon began to build in 1841, and on February 24, 1842, Victor wrote to Edward Harris: "Our house in the country is going on well, and will probably be ready for us in about two months. John is at work out there every day"; they were planning, he said, to raise pigs and poultry, and he inquired after "draining tiles, such as are made near Philadelphia."