Letter from Samuel Wigglesworth, a physician from Boston, to his father Thomas Wigglesworth of Boston, written at Cleveland, Ohio, Cincinnati, on board Steamer "Elk" near Louisville and St. Louis. Wigglesworth travelled from Boston to Buffalo, then to Cleveland. He crossed the state of Ohio on the canal via Munroe Falls to Portsmouth near Cincinnati, where he took a boat down the Ohio River to visit the medical college and anatomical museum at Louisville. He passed through the canal and went aground every day en route to St. Louis, mentioning along the way the irregularity of steam boat arrivals and departures, robberies committed on the boats, manners of other passengers, and his care of a patient who was suffering with fever and ague at St. Louis.
