Your favor of the 28th came to hand in due time and I have since communicated with Mr Davis . He is ready to make you a visit "about the middle of next month," for which purpose, remit, if you please, a Draft for $100 in my [power] upon some New York Bank and I will forthwith give him directions to proceed. The $100 will barely pay his traveling expenses, though he is willing for that sum to go on & stay three days, during which time he will make any pencil Drawings of Buildings, gates, &c &c that you may desire. But if more elaborate working drawings & specifications are required he will charge accordingly & as you may agree on before using them.

Mr Davis is the readiest & most skillful draughtsman that I know, and can furnish you with designs for Exterior Elevations or Interior Decorations — plans for Gates, Fences, & improving grounds about Buildings — in fact the danger is, when he mounts the Pegasus of Design, he may surprise the restraining taste of another.

There is no room for attempting Landscape Gardening, about the College Buildings. All that can be done, in my opinion, is to trim the defective limbs of trees, remove the failing trees, grade the roads & cover them (if it can be got) with gravel, remove the surface stone from the grounds & enrich them so as to get grass to grow (at least in the more open spaces). The rears of the adjoining Lots to be excluded from sight by planting a thick belt of trees along the boundary of the campus. This belt may vary in width & be composed of any trees, most likely to you — viza. Willows, Elms, Thorns, &c.

Buy all the stable manure which you can get & mix it in alternate layers with swamp muck or vegetable mould, of which I think there is a deposit South East of the Colleges, and this compost will answer admirably for top dressing the campus and for planting trees & shrubs.

Substantiate walls of enclosure & handsome Gates, and good roads of approach to the Village is all that I would recommend to be attempted until you are ready to proceed with my favorite plan of a Botanic Garden &c about which I intend to write more fully.

Unless I am prevented by something unforeseen, I intend to visit North Carolina in March and as I shall have occasion to go into Chatham County, I may deviate from my route, so far as to go through C Hill, if you should think that I can be of any service in promoting the plans of improvement in what you are engaged.

P S The Cedar tree or any evergreen will answer well for the belt of trees, but they are difficult to transplant