Transcribe Ward, Henry A. Letter to Orton, James (1855-10-31)

nwh Paris. Oct. 31st. 1855
My dear Orton,
Last Saturday I left with my landlady at the Rue d' Enfer, the following note. __"Dear Orton I have waited at home for you on the arrival of the last three steamers from America, but as you do not appear I have concluded to improve a fine day by making a short geological excursion. Should you by chance arrive in my absence install yourself in my room and make free with everything until my return at 10 P. M." __Three hours afterward found me at the town of comfriegne. 50 miles from Paris, entering a huge forr in which are still seen traces of the camps of the ancient Romans. the some stones with the mysterious characters of the Druids, & the ruins of a castle, built in 1047 by "Nivelon", one of the Normans, & the seat of many a bloody con- -flict during the feudal ages. But, I was in search of some- thing older than all that, and I found it to my full satisfaction in a series of sections on the roadside showing beds of quartzotz & chloritic sand with a thick stratum of numulitic limestone, & a host of cerith?, Naticas, Neritimas, Ostreas, Shark's teeth & other fossils, all illustrative, & some characteristic of the lower part of the Tertiary of the Paris Basin. Returning to the village I visited the los ruins of the tower where Joan d'Arc was captured by the English also a church commenced in the 12th century & finished in the 15th (rather slow work!) and then, once more taking the cars, I reached my room at the hour which I expected.