Sunday morning 22nd  Dear Wife good morning.  This is a very wet & disagreeable morning, having rained most of the night.  To give you a better idea of the situation, I will give you a description of the location of our cam by drawing with a tract of country you have seen.  Take the country on lower Agency, say from Blue Barlows down to Dawsons, in a wet time, in the spring of the year.  Four mile bank full, the DesMoine Rive about three feet higher than the level of the bottom, restrained from over flow by leeve, weather cloudy, raining half the time, then mud about shoe mouth deep, no place to drain surples water better than "Haners swamp", men in shelter tents, (A shelter tent is a piece of cotton Drilling about 6 feet square one piece to the man, two men put up to gether, sometimes more, the tent is so low that they have to be entered by getting down crawling into them.  They are somewhat inconvenient to dress in).  Some of the Regiments are camped on fields that were in corn last season, verry mudy.  Our camp is on a lot that has not been cultivated for a year or two & when we came here there was quite a nice sod.  Now the sod has disapeared beneath the mud.  Well I don't know whether you will realize the situation, but it is decidedly mudy & disagreeable, I have a wall tent, the Orderly stays with me.  I have no idea how long we will remain here, or where we will go to from here.  We have not been paid yet.  I think we maybe this week.  Yesterday there was quite a mail came to the Regt but none for me.  Marion received a letter from May Jane she said you was writing to me (Jan 8th) I have none from you since yours of Dec 18th.  There are many things I'd like to speak of, but as my paper is about full I will close.  J. Swift received a letter yesterday from Mitchel stating that Father had sold his place at $50 per acre.  I am happy to hear from home from any source, but would be be better pleased to have news direct, Sometimes I get vexed at my people about their negligence about writing & almost come to the conclusion that I will write only to you.  They seem to think that I have no interest in any thing.  "That's done beneath the circuit of the sun" except the dull & monotonous camp life I am leading.  They mistake, my mind is at home.  Write often my Dearest and may the choicest blessing of Heaven fall to your lot & your brightest hopes be realized, in the future, is the prayer of your husband   Lyle A Garrett
