Instruction at Dartmouth appears to have commenced in December following the removal, with four classes in attendance. In writing to Dr. Erskine, December 7, 1770, President Wheelock says: "I am now removed into the wilderness with my family, and about thirty students, English and Indians, who are all designed for the Indian service." After referring to the erection of a house for his family, and "another" for his students, he says: "I have also built a school-house, which is convenient. My nearest neighbor in the town is two and one half miles from me. I can see nothing but the lofty pines about me. My family and students are in good health, and well pleased with a solitude so favorable to their studies." In President Wheelock's account-book, David Huntington, Thomas Kendall, Ebenezer Gurley, Augustine Hibbard, James Dean, and Joseph Grover, are charged with tuition from various dates, ranging from December 7th to December 14th. The rate is _1s. 4d._ per week, "deducting abscences." In Connecticut, the tuition, for classical instruction in the school, had been _1s. 6d._ per week. The following, from President Wheelock to a distant correspondent, indicates sufficient patronage of the new institution: "Hanover, December 3, 1770. "Dear Sir,--Your son, with companion, are safely arrived. I've sent back part of my students to Connecticut. I've just got studies fitted, and made provision for the support of the rest of them. The great difficulty in taking your son is the want of provisions in this starved country. I send to Northfield and Montague for my bread, and expect supply chiefly from thence." The facilities for acquiring classical and scientific education appear to have been substantially the same at Dartmouth, at the outset, as in other American colleges of that period. The discoveries of Newton and Franklin had a marked, if not controlling, influence upon the thought of the eighteenth century. No American college, perhaps, felt this influence more than President Wheelock's Alma Mater, in which Franklin took a deep interest. At the period of the founding of Dartmouth, we find that, in Yale College, the Faculty consisted of Dr. Daggett, who was President, and Professor of Divinity; Rev. Nehemiah Strong, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and two or three tutors.