From Robert Chambers to William Kemp   5 November 1847

Dear Sir,

Knowing the interest you feel in the subject, I beg to inform you that I have found a fine terrace and plateau on Middleton Moor at about the proper height for the lowest of the Glenroy shelves. The sections there for the railway are worth going twenty miles to see—cuttings of 50, 60, and 70 feet through masses of sand, gravel and clay. There is stratified sea-sand immediately under the plateau I speak of.

I hope you are likely ere long to send me the levels of the terraces of your district, measured from the railway. Meanwhile, to make all right at the other end of the string, I am getting the elevation of the Glenroy terrace measured by a regular surveyor. I long to bring the two returns face to face.

In going home lately, I observed the cutting at what I think was the Kilnknowe. It goes through something very like a terrace or alluvial plateau. I find the rails are there 400 feet above datum, and the ground to be cut 35 feet deep. Is this what you would have expected?

[The top half of the last sheet of this letter has been cut off. This presumably would have been a line or two of final courtesies and R. Chambers’ signature. Why? ………]