Chester, State of Illinois, Jan. 21, 1843.

Dear Brother Ward,—I take this opportunity of communicating a few items of news which may be of use to your readers. I arrived here two weeks since with my family. We are all well, except Olivia, who has the whooping cough. We are living here a few weeks, waiting for the river to open for Nauvoo. We are comfortably situated, a few yards from the landing, in a stone house in a small village eighty miles below St. Louis, and three hundred from Nauvoo. Provisions are cheaper than ever; Indian corn is 20 cents per bushel; wheat 40 cents, flour, 3 1/4 dollars per barrel; oats 15 cents per bushel; pork and beef from 2 to 3 cents per lb.; butter, 10 cents; sugar, 5 cents; chickens 8 cents each etc. Cows from 8 to 10 and 12 dollars per head; good horses, from 25 to 50 dollars; land, from 11/4 to 4 dollars per acre.

We were ten weeks on the Emerald and one in coming up the river. The weather was very fine until the day before we landed, when it became extremely cold and snowy; but after a week of sever weather, it became suddenly warm and pleasant, and it remains so yet—all ice and snow have disappeared, and the weather is like May. . . . [p.206]

BIB: Pratt, Parley P. [Letter], Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star 3:12 (April 1843) p.206. (CHL)
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