From the original in the possession of Ferdinand J. Dreer, Esq., of Philadelphia.
From the original in the possession of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet of New York. In the Washington edition, the date of this letter is erroneously printed May 3d.
On June 30, 1780, Jefferson wrote to the President of Congress:
“By Mr. Foster Webb you will receive in part of the requisition of Congress of 1.953,200 Dollars, the following sums, to wit 650,000 Dollars in money, and bills for 780,239 8/9 Dollars, making in the whole 1.430,239 8/9 Dollars. There remains a deficiency of 522,960 1/9 dollars which I hope to be able to send on within four weeks from this time. I should have been very happy to have been enabled to have sent on the whole, in money, and by the day prescribed: but be assured it was absolutely impossible. There is less money than our contracts had authorized us to expect, as you will perceive by comparing the sum sent with that I had mentioned to you in a former letter. This has been occasioned by a breach of contract in those to whom we had sold property to raise the money. Instead of this they have given us bills, which are sent on and I hope will be paid so that no disappointment may happen.”
From Calendar of Virginia State Papers, i., 360.
From a copy courteously furnished by Hon. Elliot Danforth, of Albany.
On the same day, Jefferson wrote Gates:
“I am extremely mortified at the misfortune incurred in the South and the more so as the Militia of our State concurred so eminently in producing it. We have sent from Chesterfield a week ago 350 regulars, 50 more march to-morrow, and there will be 100 or 150 still to go thence as fast as they come out of the Hospital. Our new recruits begin to rendezvous about the 10th inst. and may all be expected to be in by the 25. We call on 2000 more Militia, who are required to be at Hillsborough by the 25th of Octo. but we have not arms to put into the Hands of these men: There are here going on to you, 3000 stand from Congress. We have about the same number in our Magazine. I trust Congress will aid us. We are desired in general to send you all kinds of Military stores, but I wish you would be so good as to send me a specification of the articles and quantities you most want, because our means of transportation being very limited we may otherwise misemploy even these. Powder, flints, cannon, cannon-ball are the only articles I think we can send. Lead I hope you will get immediately from the mines which will save a vast deal of transportation. Our Treasury is utterly exhausted and cannot again be replenished till the assembly meets in October. We might however furnish considerable Quantities of Provision were it possible to convey it to you. We shall immediately send out an Agent into the Southern Counties to collect and forward all he can. Will Militia Volunteer Horse be of any service to you and how many?”
A letter to Washington, of the same date, is largely a repetition of this. It is printed in Washington’s edition, i., 265
A letter to Washington, of the same date and tenor, is printed in Washington’s edition, i., 268
A letter to Washington, of the same date and tenor, is printed in Washington’s edition, i., 270; and the first paragraph, with slight changes, forms a letter to Gates, dated Nov. 4th.
A letter to Washington, of the same date and tenor, is in Washington’s edition, i., 271.
From the original in the possession of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York. VOL. III. —6
One of the Convention prisoners, in Albemarle.
From Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ii., 205
From the Historical Magazine, xiv., 244.
Copied from the Sparks MSS., Harvard College.
These extracts were made by Jefferson, with a view to vindicate himself from the charges of incompetence and cowardice made in connection with the invasion of Virginia in 1781. The copy from which this is printed, was written in 1800, and the original diary is no longer extant. Under the year 1800, in this collection, will be printed two more papers relating to this subject, one of which is also in diary form.
From the Sparks MSS., Harvard College.
On Jan. 18, 1781, Jefferson wrote to John Walker: “Baron Steuben who commands the military force in this state on the present invasion, being much unacquainted with its laws, customs, resources and organization while he has hourly cause to apply to them has desired we will prevail on some gentleman acquainted with these to be of his family to point his applications to the proper persons places and to enable him to avail himself of our strength and resources. Searching about for such a person we cast our eye on you and hope you will undertake the office. Whatever expences may be incurred by you on this occasion must be public a proper compensation moreover be paid for time and trouble. These matters may be settled either before or after the service performed, as you chuse. Your answer by the bearer and immediate attendance if possible will oblige.”
From the Sparks MSS., Harvard College.
From the Sparks MSS., Harvard College.
A letter to Washington of the same date and tenor is printed in Washington’s edition, i., 282.
This letter was also written to the Board of War of Maryland.
The portion omitted is of the same tenor as the last two paragraphs of the preceding letter. VOL. III. —9
The resolution adopted Jan. 2, 1781, ceding to the United States the lands claimed by Virginia, northwest of the Ohio, on condition that the States ratified the Articles of Confederation.
Agreeing to waive right of navigation in case the interests of the United States demanded it.
From Calendar of Virginia State Papers, i., 445.
From Calendar of Virginia State Papers, i., 456
Harrison was about going to Philadelphia as a sort of special agent of Virginia to the Congress.
Probably to George Rogers Clarke.
A letter to Washington of the same date and tenor is printed in Washington’s edition, i., 291.
From the Sparks MSS., Harvard College.
A letter to Washington, of the same date and tenor, is in Washington’s edition, i., 296.
No journal of this meeting of the assembly is known to exist.
From a copy in the Sparks MSS., Harvard College.
A letter to Washington of the same date and tenor, is in Washington’s edition, i., 297.
From Lee’s Life of R. H. Lee, ii., 191.
Benedict Arnold.
Under the command of Phillips.
From a copy courteously furnished by Mr. D. McN. Stautter.
A letter to Washington, of the same date and tenor, is in Washington’s edition, i., 304.
Copied from the Sparks MSS., Harvard College.
A letter to the President of Congress, of the same date, is of much the same tenor.
Jefferson resigned his office of Governor June 1, 1781. On June 15th, he was appointed by the Continental Congress one of four commissioners to negotiate a peace in Europe, but he declined the appointment.
The capitulation of Cornwallis.
See Papers of James Madison, i., 102; 106.
From the original in the possession of Mr. F. J. Dreer, of Philadelphia.
Informing him that the people have “frequently elected you . . . to please you, but now that they had called you forth into public office to serve themselves.”— Cf. Washington’s edition, i., 316.
The death of Mrs. Jefferson.
From Haye’s Virginia Gazette, Saturday, Dec. 28, 1782. See Autobiography, i., 80.
Altered to “8 or 9” in edition of 1787.
The words in brackets are struck out with ink, in all the copies I have examined. And in Jefferson’s letter to Thomson of June 21, 1785, he mentions the copy of the Notes sent to Monroe, and adds: “Pray ask the favor of Colonel Monroe, in page 5, line 17, to strike out the words ‘above the mouth of the Appamattox,’ which makes nonsense of the passage; and I forgot to correct it before I had enclosed and sent off the copy to him.”
“James and Roanoke rivers” in edition of 1853.
In the edition of 1853 is here added: “It is said, however, that at a very moderate expense the whole current of the upper part of the Kanhaway may be turned into the South Fork of Roanoke, the Alleghaney, there subsiding, and the two rivers approaching so near, that a canal of nine miles long and of thirty feet depth, at the deepest part would draw the water of the Kanhaway into this branch of the Roanoke; this canal would be in Montgomery County, the court-house of which is on the top of the Alleghaney.”
Besides the three channels of communication mentioned between the western waters and the Atlantic, there are two others to which the Pennsylvanians are turning their attention; one from Presque-isle, on Lake Erie, to Le Bœuf, down the Alleganey to Kiskiminitas, then up the Kiskiminitas, and from thence, by a small portage, to Juniata, which falls into the Susquehanna: the other from Lake Ontario to the East branch of the Delaware, and down that to Philadelphia. Both these are said to be very practicable; and, considering the enterprising temper of the Pennsylvanians and particularly of the merchants of Philadelphia, whose object is concentred in promoting the commerce and trade of one city, it is not improbable but one or both of these communications will be opened and improved.— Charles Thomson, in appendix.
“The reflections I was led into on viewing this passage of the Potowmac thro’ the Blue ridge were, that this country must have suffered some violent convulsion, and that the face of it must have been changed from what it probably was some centuries ago; that the broken and ragged faces of the mountain on each side the river; the tremendous rocks, which are left with one end fixed in the precipice, and the other jutting out, and seemingly ready to fall for want of support, the bed of the river for several miles below obstructed, and filled with the loose stones carried from this mound; in short, everything on which you cast your eye evidently demonstrates a disrupture and breach in the mountain, and that, before this happened, what is now a fruitful vale, was formerly a great lake or collection of water, which possibly might have here formed a mighty cascade, or had its vent to the ocean by the Susquehanna, where the Blue ridge seems to terminate. Besides this, there are other parts of this country which bear evident traces of a like convulsion. From the best accounts I have been able to obtain, the place where the Delaware now flows through the Kittatinny mountain, which is a continuation of what is called the North ridge, or mountain, was not its original course, but that it passed through what is now called “the Wind-gap,” a place several miles to the westward, and about a hundred feet higher than the present bed of the river. This Wind-gap is about a mile broad, and the stones in it such as seem to have been washed for ages by water running over them. Should this have been the case, there must have been a large lake behind that mountain, and by some uncommon swell in the waters, or by some convulsion of nature, the river must have opened its way through a different part of the mountain, and meeting there with less obstruction, carried away with it the opposing mounds of earth, and deluged the country below with the immense collection of waters to which this new passage gave vent. There are still remaining, and daily discovered, innumerable instances of such a deluge on both sides of the river, after it passed the hills above the falls of Trenton, and reached the Champaign. On the New Jersey side, which is flatter than the Pennsylvania side, all the country below Croswick hills seems to have been overflowed to the distance of from ten to fifteen miles back from the river, and to have acquired a new soil by the earth and clay brought down and mixed with the native sand. The spot on which Philadelphia stands evidently appears to be made ground. The different strata through which they pass in digging to water, the acorns, leaves, and sometimes branches, which are found above twenty feet below the surface, all seem to demonstrate this. I am informed that at Yorktown in Virginia, in the bank of York river, there are different strata of shells and earth, one above another, which seem to point out that the country there has undergone several changes; that the sea has, for a succession of ages, occupied the place where dry land now appears; and that the ground has been suddenly raised at various periods. What a change would it make in the country below, should the mountains at Niagara, by any accident, be cleft asunder, and a passage suddenly opened to drain off the waters of Erie and the upper lakes! While ruminating on these subjects, I have often been hurried away by fancy, and led to imagine, that what is now the bay of Mexico, was once a champaign country; and that from the point or cape of Florida, there was a continued range of mountains through Cuba, Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Barbadoes, and Trinidad, till it reached the coast of America, and formed the shores which bounded the ocean, and guarded the country behind; that by some convulsion or shock of nature, the sea had broken through these mounds, and deluged that vast plain, till it reached the foot of the Andes; that being there heaped up by the trade winds, always blowing from one quarter, it had found its way back, as it continues to do, through the Gulf between Florida and Cuba, carrying with it the loam and sand it may have scooped from the country it had occupied, part of which it may have deposited on the shores of North America, and with part formed the banks of Newfoundland. But these are only the visions of fancy.”— Charles Thomson, in appendix.
In the edition of 1853 is added the following footnote: “Herodutus, l. 7, c. 129, after stating that Thessaly is a plain country surrounded by high mountains, from which there is no outlet but the fissure through which the Peneus flows, and that according to ancient tradition it had once been an entire lake, supposes that fissure to have been made by an earthquake rending the mountain asunder.”
In the edition of 1853 are footnote references as follows: “1. Epoques, 434. Musschenbroek, § 2,312. 2. Epoques, 317.”
In the edition of 1853, the following addition is here inserted: “To what is here said on the height of mountains, subsequent information has enabled me to furnish some additions and corrections.
“General Williams, a nephew of Dr. Franklin, on a journey from Richmond by the warm and Red Springs to the Alleghaney, has estimated by barometrical observations the height of some of our ridges of mountains above the tide-water, as follows:
feet | |
---|---|
The Eastern base of the Blue Ridge subjacent to Rockfish Gap, | 100 |
Summit of the mountain adjacent to that Gap, | 1,822 |
The valley constituting the Eastern basis of the Warm Spring Mountain, | 943 |
Summit of the Warm Spring Mountain, | 2,247 |
The Western valley of the Warm Spring Mountain, being the Eastern base of the Alleghaney, | 949 |
Summit of the Alleghaney, 6 miles Southwest of the Red Springs, | 2,760 |
“In November, 1815, with a Ramsden’s theodolite of 3½ inches radius, with nonius divisions to 3′, and a base of 1¼ mile on the low grounds of Otter River, distant 4 miles from the summits of the two peaks of Otter, I measured geometrically their heights above the water of the river at its base, and found that of the sharp or South peak, | 2,946½ |
That of the flat or North peak, | 3,103½ |
“As we may with confidence say that the base of the peaks is at least as high above the tide-water at Richmond as that of the Blue Ridge at Rockfish Gap, (being 40 miles farther westward,) and their highest summit of course 3,203½ feet above that tide-water, it follows that the summit of the highest peak is 343½ feet higher than that of the Alleghaney, as measured by General Williams.
“The highest of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, by barometrical estimate made by Captain Partridge, was found to be 4,885 feet from its base, and the highest of the Catskill mountains in New York 3,105 feet.
“Two observations, with an excellent pocket sextant, gave a mean of 37° 28′ 50″ for the latitude of the sharp peak of Otter.
“Baron Humboldt states that in latitude 37° (which is nearly over medium parallel,) perpetual snow is no where known so low as 1,200 toises = 7,671 feet above the level of the sea, and in sesquialtoral ratio nearly to the highest peak of Otter.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote reference to “2 Epoques, 91, 112.”
In edition of 1853 is the following footnote:
“Bouguer mentions a cascade of two or three hundred toises height of the Bogota, a considerable river passing Santa Fé. The cataract is verticle, and is about 15 or 16 leagues below Santa Fe.—Bouguer, xci. Buffon mentions one of 300 feet at Terni, in Italy. 1. Epoques, 470.”
Altered in edition of 1853 to “and flowing from that valley.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote reference, “See Musschenbroek, § 2, 604.”
Altered in edition of 1853 to read: “than the semi-axis which gives its height.”
In the edition of 1853, the text from this point to the end of the paragraph is altered to read: “and descending then to the valley below, the sensation becomes delightful in the extreme. It is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime to be felt beyond what they are here: so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven, the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable. The fissure continues deep and narrow, and following the margin of the stream upwards, about three-eights of a mile, you arrive at a limestone cavern, less remarkable for the height and extent than those before described. Its entrance into the hill is but a few feet above the bed of the stream. This bridge is in the county of Rockbridge, to which it has given name, and affords a public and commodious passage over a valley, which cannot be crossed elsewhere for a considerable distance. The stream passing under it is called Cedar Creek. It is a water of James River, and sufficient in the dryest seasons to turn a grist mill, though its fountain is not more than two miles above.
“This description was written after a lapse of several years from the time of my visit to the bridge, and under an error of recollection which requires apology, for it is from the bridge itself that the mountains are visible both ways, and not from the bottom of the fissure, as my impression then was. The statement therefore in the former editions needs the corrections here given to it. August 16, 1817.”
Don Ulloa mentions a break, similar to this, in the province of Angaraez in South America. It is from sixteen to twenty-two feet wide, one hundred and eleven feet deep, and of 1.3 miles continuance, English measure. Its breadth at top is not sensibly greater than at bottom. But the following fact is remarkable, and will furnish some light for conjecturing the probable origin of our natural bridge. “Esta caxa, ó cause está cortada en péna viva con tanta precision, que las desigualdades del un lado entrantes, corresponden á las del otro lado salientes, como si aquella altura se hubiese abierto expresamente, con sus bueltas y tortuosidades, para darle transito á los aguas por entre los dos morallones que la forman; siendo tal su igualdad, que si llegasen á juntarse se endentarian uno con otro sin dextar hueco.” Not. Amer. ii. § 10. Don Ulloa inclines to the opinion that this channel has been effected by the wearing of the water which runs through it, rather than that the mountain should have been broken open by any convulsion of nature. But if it had been worn by the running of water, would not the rocks which form the sides, have been worn plain? or if, meeting in some parts with veins of harder stone, the water had left prominences on the one side, would not the same cause have sometimes, or perhaps generally, occasioned prominences on the other side also? Yet Don Ulloa tells us, that on the other side there are always corresponding cavities, and that these tally with the prominences so perfectly, that, were the two sides to come together they would fit in all their indentures, without leaving any void. I think that this does not resemble the effect of running water, but looks rather as if the two sides had parted asunder. The sides of the break, over which is the Natural bridge of Virginia, consisting of a veiny rock which yields to time, the correspondence between the salient and re-entering inequalities, if it existed at all, has now disappeared. This break has the advantage of the one described by Don Ulloa in its finest circumstance; no portion in that instance having held together, during the separation of the other parts, so as to form a bridge over the Abyss.— T. J.
Altered to “Muskingum” in edition of 1787.
In the edition of 1853, a paragraph is here inserted, as follows:
“Adjacent to the vein of lime stone first mentioned, or at least to some parts of it, is a vein of Slate of greater breadth than that of the lime stone, sometimes mixed with it. The neighborhood of these veins of lime stone, and slate, and of lime stone and schist, between the North Mountain and Blue Ridge, coincides with the following observations of Bouguer, while in Peru: Le marbre est tres commun sur le bord de plusieurs de ces rivieres: on y voit aussi des rochers d’ardoise j’ai souvent eu occasion d’y observer le grande affinité qu’il y a entre ces deux sortes de pierre. J’avois deja fait cette remarque dans la Cordeliere. Les rochers de marbre et d’ardoise s’y touchent souvent, et j’en ai vu qui etoit ardoise par une extremité et marbre parfait par l’autre. Toutes les fois qui qui’il survient un nouveau sur pierreux analogue à l’ardoise et en unit les feuilles, il rend tout le rocher plus compacte et plus dur; le rocher cesse d’etre de l’ardoise pour devener du marbre. Une pierre également distribuée par feuilles qu’on nomme schite, est aussi sujette à cette transformation. Quelquefois ce ne sont pas simplement des feuilles qui se soudent entr’elles un quartier de cette pierre se joint comme au hazard avec au autre. Si le tout est ensuite exposé à l’action du gravier des cailloux roulés par un eau courante, et qu’il reçoive, une sorte d’arrondissement qui le rende à peu près sylindrique, il prend toutes les apparences d’un tronc d’arbre; et il est meme quelquefois très difficile de ne s’y pas tromper. Je fus très faché de ne pouvoir porter avec moi une de ces-especes de tronc que je trouvai dans une ravine entre Guanacas et la Plata, au pied d’une colline nommé la Subida del Frayle. C’etoit un morceau de marbre qui avoit 20 pouces de longueur sur 17 ou 18 de diametre; on distinguoit comme, les fibres du bois, la surface presente des noeuds de diverses formes; le conteur meme du tronc etoit également propre à en imposer. Il y avoit un enfoncement d’un coté qui formoit un angle rentrant, et une saillie du coté opposé. Je ne sçavois qu’en penser, de meme que les personnes qui m’accompagnoient. Je ne reussis enfin a me decider, qu’en jettant les yeux sur d’autres quartiers de schite que etoient auprés, qui commençoient á prendre les memes apparences, mais qui n’etoient pas encore dans un etat à pouvoir jetter dans l’erreur, et au contraire m’eclairerent sur la nature du morceau de marbre. On pretend qu’entre les differens bois c’est le gayac qui se petrifie le plus aisement. On m’assuroit que je verrois audessou de Mompox une croix dont tout le haut de l’arbre etoit encore de ce bois pendent que le bas etoit reellement de la pierre à fusil. Plusieurs personnes m’affirmerent en avoit tiré du feu. Lorsque je passai dans cet endroit on me confirma la meme chose; mais on m’ajouta qu’une crue extraordinaire avoit fait tomber la croix dans la riviere, il y avoit 6 à 7 ans. Page xciii.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote, as below:
“On whose authority, it has been said? Bouguer, the best witness respecting the Andes, speaking of Peru, says: ‘On n’y distingue aucun vestige des grandes inondations qui ont laissé tant de marques dans toutes les autres regions. J’ai fait tout mon possible pour y decouvrir quelque coquille, mais toujours inutilement apparamment que les montagne du Perou sont trop hautes.’ Bouguer, xv. See 4 Clavigera, Div. 3, § 1. See 2 Epoques, 268. 1 Epoques, 415.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote reference to “2 Epoques, 378.”
2. Buffon Epoques, 96.— T. J.
In the edition of 1787 is here added:
“Or without supposing it a lake, admit such an extraordinary collection of the waters of the atmosphere, and an influx from the Atlantic ocean, forced by long-continued Western winds.”
In the edition of 1853 this passage reads, “That lake or that sea.”
In the edition of 1853 a footnote adds:
“Five deluges are enumerated by Xenophon, the author of the tract de Equivocis in these words: ‘Inundationes plures fuere. Prima novimestris inundatio terrarum sub prisco Ogyge. Secunda niliaca menstrua, sub Ægyptiis Hercule et Prometheo. Bimestris autem, sub Ogyge Attico in Achaia. Trimetris Thessalica, sub Deucalione. Par Pharonica, sub Proteo Aegyptio in raptu Helenæ.’ ”
The text from this point to the end of the paragraph Jefferson cancelled in 1786, printing two new leaves which he substituted by insertion in place of the pages 52–4 of the original, in some copies ( cf. note, p. 339). This change was embodied in the edition of 1787. The new text was as follows:
“A second opinion has been entertained; which is that, in times anterior to the records either of history or tradition, the bed of the ocean the principal residence of the shelled tribe, has, by some great convulsion of nature, been heaved to the heights at which we now find shells other remains of marine animals. The favourers of this opinion do well to suppose the great events on which it rests to have taken place beyond all the æras of history; for within these certainly, none such are to be found; we may venture to say further that no fact has taken place, either in our own days, or in the thousands of years recorded in history, which proves the existence of any natural agents, within or without the bowels of the earth, of force sufficient to heave, to the height of 15,000 feet, such masses as the Andes. The difference between the power necessary to produce such an effect, that which shuffled together the different parts of Calabria in our days, is so immense, that, from the existence of the latter we are not authorized to infer that of the former.
“M. de Voltaire, has suggested a third solution of this difficulty (Quest. encycl. Coquilles) he cites an instance in Touraine, where, in the space of 80 years, a particular spot of earth had been twice metamorphosed in to soft stone, which had become hard when employed in building: in this stone, shells of various kinds were produced, discoverable at first only with the microscope, but afterwards growing with the stone. From this fact, I suppose, he would have us infer that besides the usual process for generating shells by the elaboration of earth and water in animal vessels, nature may have provided an equivalent operation, by passing the same materials through the pores of calcareous earths and stones: as we see calcareous drop stones generating every day by percolation of water through limestone, and new marble forming in the quarries from which the old has been taken out; and it might be asked whether it is more difficult for nature to shoot the calcareous juice into the form of a shell, than other juices into the forms of chrystals, plants, animals, according to the construction of the vessels through which they pass? There is a wonder somewhere. Is it greatest on this branch of the dilemma; on that which supposes the existence of a power of which we have no evidence in any other case; or on the first which requires us to believe the creation of a body of water, and it’s subsequent annihilation? The establishment of the instance, cited by M. de Voltaire, of the growth of shells unattached to animal bodies, would have been that of his theory. But he has not established it. He has not even left it on ground so respectable as to have rendered it an object of enquiry to the literati of his own country. Abandoning this fact therefore, the three hypotheses are equally unsatisfactory; we must be contented to acknowledge that this great phenomenon is as yet unsolved. Ignorance is preferable to error: he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.”
Altered in edition of 1853 to: “a gaseous stream so strong as to give to the sand,” etc.
In edition of 1853 is a footnote reference to “2 Epoques, 138, 139.”
In the edition of 1853 is here inserted: “This gaseous fluid is probably inflamable air, the hydrogene of the new chemistry, which we know will kindle on mixing with the oxygenous portion of the atmospheric air, and the application of flame. It may be produced by the decomposition of water or of pyrites, within the body of the hill.”
In the edition of 1853, a paragraph is here inserted, as follows:
“We are told that during a great storm on the 25th of December, 1798, the Syphon Fountain, near the mouth of the North Holston, ceased and a spring broke out about 100 feet higher up the hill.” * Syphon fountains have been explained by supposing the duct which leads from the reservoir to the surface of the earth to be in the form of a syphon, a, b, c, where it is evident that till the water rises in the reservoir to d, the level of the highest point of the syphon, it cannot flow through the duct, and it is known that when it once begins to flow it will draw off the water of the reservoir to the orifice a, of the syphon. If the duct be larger than the supply of the reservoir possibly the force of the waters and loosening of the earth by them, during the storm above mentioned, may have opened a more direct duct as from e to f, horizontally or declining, which issues higher up the hill than the one fed by the syphon. In that case it becomes a common spring. Should this duct be again closed or diminished by any new accident, and both springs be kept in action from the same reservoir.”
A note to this new paragraph, as above starred, is:
“See Pleasant’s Argus, August 16, ’99; that this disappeared December 25, ’98, on which day a spring broke out 100 feet higher up the hill.”
“There is a plant or weed, called the Jamestown weed (Datura pericarpiis erectis ovatis. Linn.) of a very similar quality. The late Dr. Bond informed me, that he had under his care a patient, a young girl, who had put the seeds of this plant into her eye, which dilated the pupil to such a degree, that she could see in the dark, but in the light was almost blind. The effect that the leaves had when eaten by a ship’s crew that arrived at Jamestown, are well known. (An instance of temporary imbecility produced by them is mentioned. Beverl. H. of Virg. b 2, r 4.)”— Charles Thomson, in appendix.
In the edition of 1853 is added: “Azalea viscosa.”
In the edition of 1787 is here inserted: “White cedar. Cupressus Thyoides.”
In the edition of 1853 this note is added: “Qu. If known in Europe before the discovery of America? Ramusio supposes this to be the grain described by Diod. Dic. L. 2, in his account of the travels of Iambulus, in the following passage: ‘Φύεσθαι γὰρ παῤ αύτοῖς ϰὰλαμον πολύν, φέροντα ϰαρπὸν δαψιλῆ, παρεμφερῆ τοῖς λευϰοῖς ὀρόβόις [Ceci bianchi.—Ital. Ers. Franc.] τοῦτου ο[Editor: illegible character]ν συναγαγόντες βρέχουσιν ἐν ὕδατι θερμ[Editor: illegible character], μ[Editor: illegible character]χρις [Editor: illegible character]η τὸ μ[Editor: illegible character]γεθος ἔχωσιν ὡς ὠοῦ περιστερᾶς. ἔπειτα συνθλὰσαντες ϰαὶ τρίψαντες ἐμπειρως ταῖς χερσί, διαπλὰττούσιν ἄρτονς. οὔς ὀπτήσατες σιτοῦυτατ, διαφόρους ὄντας τῆ γλυϰυτι.’ Ramusio says of the maize ‘in Italia, ai tempi nostri, [1550] é stato, veduto “la prima volta,” and the Island in which it was found by Iambulus was Sumatra.—1. Ramus. 174. The Maison rustique says that Turkey Corn came first from the West Indies into Turkey, and from thence into France.’—L. 5, c. 17. Zimmerman says: ‘Il tire son origine des pays chauds de l’Amerique.’ Zoologie geographique, page 24. ‘Il frumentone fu dalla America in Ispagne, e quindi in altri pæsi della Europa.’ ‘Dalli Spagnuoli di Europa e di America è chiamato il frumentone col nome Mais, preso dalla lingua Haitina che si parlava nella isola oggidi appellata Spagnuola, o sia di S. Domenico.’—Clavigero i., 56. ‘Il frumentone, biada dalla providenza accordata a quella parte del mondo in vece del frumento dell Europa, del riso del Asia, e del miglio d’Africa.’—a. Clavig., 218. Acosta classes Indian Corn with the plants peculiar to America, observing that it is called ‘trigo de las Indias’ in Spain, and ‘Grano de Turquia’ in Italy. He says, ‘De donde fue el Mayz a Indias, y porque este grano tan provechoso le llaman en Italia Grano de Turquia mejor sabre preguntárlo, que dezirlo. Porque en efecto en los antiquos no hallo rastro deste genero, aunque el Milio que Plinio escrive aver venido a Italia de la India diez años avia, quando escrivio, tiene alguna similitud con el Mayz, en lo que dize que es grano, y que nace en caña, y se cubrede hoja, y que tiene al remate comuncabellos, y el ser fertilissimo, todo lo qual no quadra con el Mijo, que comunmente entienden por Milio, en fin, repartio el Criador a todas partes su gobierne; a este orbe dio el triga que es el principal sustento de los hombres; a aquel de Indias dio el Mayz, que tras el trigo tiene el sequndo lugar, para sustenta de hombres, y animales.’—Acosta 4, 16.”
In the edition of 1853 this note is added: “Les Pommes de terre sont indigenes en Guiane.”—Zimmerman, Zool. Geogr., 26. “La Papa fu portata in Messico dall’ America Meridionale, suo proprio pæse.”—1. Clavigero, 58.
“Indian corn” is omitted in edition of 1853.
In the edition of 1853 “by the Indians” is inserted at this point.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “Clavigero says: ‘Non ni sovviene che appo qualche nazione Americana visia memoria o degli elefanti, o degli ippopotami, o d’altri quadrupedi di si fatta grandezza. Non so che fin ora, fra scavamenti fatta nella Nuova Spagna, siasi mai scoperto, un carcamo d’Ippopotamo, e quel ch’ è piu, ne anche un dente d’elefante.’—125.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “2 Epoques, 276, in Mexico; but 1, Epoques, 250, denies the fact as to S. America.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote reference to: “22 Buffon; 2. Epoques, 230.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “2. Epoques, 232. Buffon pronounces it is not the grinder either of the elephant or hippopotamus, ‘mais d’une espece la premier et la grande de tous les animaux terrestres, qui est perdue.’ ”
Hunter.— T. J.
D’Aubenton.— T. J.
Altered to “an animal six times the cubic volume” in edition of 1853.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote reference to: “Xviii. 178: xxii. 121.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “Qu? See 2. Epoques de Buffon, 231, 234.”
In the edition of 1853 the words “in life” are here inserted.
In the edition of 1853 the following passage is here interpolated:
“M. de Buffon considers the existence of elephant bones in Northern regions, where the animal itself is no longer found, as one of the leading facts which support his theory, that the earth was once in a liquid state, rendered so by the action of fire, that the process of cooling began at its poles, and proceeded gradually towards the torrid zone, that with this progress the animals of warm temperature retired towards the equator, and that in the present state of that progress the globe remains of sufficient warmth, for the elephant for instance, in the tropical regions, only to which therefore they have retired, as their last asylum, and where they must become extinct when the degree of warmth shall be reduced below that adapted to their constitution. How does it happen then that no elephants exist at present in the tropical regions of America, to which those of the Ohio must have retired, according to this theory?”
In spite of the soundness of these arguments, Buffon did not yield to them. Jefferson wrote to Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785: “I have never yet seen Monsr. de Buffon. He has been in the country all the summer. I sent him a copy of the book, have only heard his sentiments on one particular of it, that of the identity of the Mammoth Elephant. As to this he retains his opinion that they are the same.”
Buffon, xviii. 112., edn. Paris, 1764.— T. J.
xviii. 100, 156.— T. J. [ In the edition of 1853 this note is elaborated to: ] “Xviii. 100, 156. ‘La terre est demeurée froide, impuissante a produire les principes actifs, a developer les germes des plus grands quadrupedes, auxquels il faut, pour croitre et se multiplier, toute la chaleur, toute l’ activité que le soleil peut donner a la terre, amoureuse.’—Xviii. 156. ‘L’ardeur des hommes et la grandeur des animaux dependent de la salubrité de la chaleur de l’air.’—Ib. 160.”
viii. 134.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote:
“ ‘Tout ce qu’il y a de colossal et de grand dans la nature, a eté formé dans les terres du Nord.’ 1. Epoques 255. ‘C’est dans les regions de notre Nord que la nature vivante s’est elevée a ses plus grandes dimensions.’—Ib. 263.”
In a latter to Chastellux, June 7, 1785, Jefferson further argues on this question as follows:
“I will beg leave to say here a few words on the general question of the degeneracy of animals in America. 1. As to the degeneracy of the man of Europe transplanted to America, it is no part of Mons. de Buffon’s system. He goes indeed within one step of it, but he stops there. The Abbé Raynal alone has taken that step. Your knowledge of America enables you to judge this question, to say whether the lower class of people in America, are less informed less susceptible of information than the lower class in Europe; and whether those in America who have received such an education as that country can give, are less improved by it than Europeans of the same degree of education. 2. As to the Aboriginal man of America, I know of no respectable evidence on which the opinion of his inferiority of genuis has been founded but that of Don Ulloa. As to Robertson, he never was in America, he relates nothing on his own knowledge, he is a compiler only of the relations of others, and a mere translator of the opinions of Mons. de Buffon. I should as soon therefore add the translators of Robertson to the witnesses of this fact, as himself. Pauw, the beginner of this charge was a compiler from the works of others; and of the most unlucky description; for he seems to have read the writings of travellers only to collect and republish their lies. It is really remarkable that in three volumes 12mo. of small print it is scarcely possible to find one truth, and yet that the author should be able to produce authority for every fact he states, as he says he can. Don Ulloa’s testimony is the most respectable. He wrote of what he saw, but he saw the Indian of South America only, and that after he had passed through ten generations of slavery. It is very unfair, from this sample, to judge of the natural genius of this race of men; and after supposing that Don Ulloa had not sufficiently calculated the allowance which should be made for this circumstance, we do him no injury in considering the picture he draws of the present Indians of S. America as no picture of what their ancestors were 300 years ago. It is in N. America we are to seek their original character. And I am safe in affirming that the proofs of genius given by the Indians of N. America, place them on a level with whites in the same uncultivated state. The North of Europe furnishes subjects enough for comparison with them, for a proof of their equality. I have seen some thousands myself, and conversed much with them, and have found in them a male, sound understanding. I have had much information from men who had lived among them and whose veracity and good sense were so far known to me as to establish a reliance on their information. They have all agreed in bearing witness in favour of the genius of this people. As to their bodily strength their manners rendering it disgraceful to labour, those muscles employed in labour will be weaker with them than with the European labourer; but those which are exerted in the chase, and those faculties which are employed in the tracing of an enemy or a wild beast, in contriving ambuscades for him, and in carrying them through their execution, are much stronger than with us, because they are more exercised. I believe the Indian then to be in body mind equal to the white man. I have supposed the black man, in his present state, might not be so, but it would be hazardous to affirm that, equally cultivated for a few generations, he would not become so. 3. As to the inferiority of the other animals of America, without more facts I can add nothing to what I have said in my Notes. As to the theory of Mons. de Buffon that heat is friendly moisture adverse to the production of large animals, I am lately furnished with a fact by Doctor Franklin which proves the air of London of Paris to be more humid than that of Philadelphia, and so creates a suspicion that the opinion of the superior humidity of America may perhaps have been too hastily adopted. And supposing that fact admitted, I think the physical reasonings urged to shew that in a moist country animals must be small, and that in a hot one they must be large, are not built on the basis of experiment. These questions however cannot be decided ultimately at this day. More facts must be collected, and more time flow off, before the world will be ripe for decision. In the meantime doubt is wisdom.”
It is said that this animal is seldom seen above thirty miles from shore, or beyond the 56th degree of latitude. The interjacent islands between Asia and America admit his passing from one continent to the other without exceeding these bounds. And in fact, travellers tell us that these islands are places of principal resort for them, and especially in the season of bringing forth their young.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 this passage is altered to read:
“Kalm tells us that the moose, original, or palmated elk of America, is as high as a tall horse; and Catesby that it is about the bigness of a middle-sized ox. I have seen a skeleton 7 feet high, and from good information believe they are often considerably higher. The Elk of Europe is not two-thirds of his height.”
To this passage in the edition of 1853 is appended the following footnote: “This sentence in the first edition began as follows: ‘Kalm tells us that the Black Moose or Renne of America is as high as a tall horse,’ c. The author corrected it as in the text, appending a marginal note in these words: ‘This is not correct. Kalm considers the Moose as the Elk, and not as the Renne. Musu is the Algonkin name of the Original, or Elk.’—I. xxvii.”
I. 233, Lon. 1772.— T. J.
Ib. 233.— T. J.
I. xxvii.— T. J.
XXIV. 162.— T. J.
XV. 42.— T. J.
I. 359. I. 48, 221, 251, II. 52.— T. J.
II. 78.— T. J.
I. 220.— T. J.
XXVII. 63. XIV. 119. Harris, II. 387. Buffon, Quad. IX. I.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 is here inserted the word “Renne.”
The word “roe” is omitted in the edition of 1853.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “Even Amer. Vesp. says he saw lions and wild bears in America.—Letters, page 77. He saw a serpent 8 braccie long, and as thick as his own waist.—Liii.”
Quad. IX. 158.— T. J.
XXV. 184.— T. J.
Quad. IX. 132.— T. J.
XIX. 2.— T. J.
Quad. IX. 41.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 this end of the sentence reads: “the palmated kind is confined to the more Northern latitudes.”
The descriptions of Theodat, Denys and La Hontan, cited by Monsieur de Buffon, under the article Elan, authorize the supposition that the flat-horned elk is found in the northern parts of America. It has not however extended to our latitudes. On the other hand, I could never learn that the round-horned elk has been seen further north than the Hudson’s river. This agrees with the former elk in its general character, being, like that, when compared with a deer, very much larger, its ears longer, broader, and thicker in proportion, its hair much longer, neck and tail shorter, having a dewlap before the breast (caruncula gutturalis Linnæi) a white spot often, if not always, of a foot diameter, on the hinder part of the buttocks round the tail; its gait a trot, and attended with a rattling of the hoofs; but distinguished from that decisively by its horns, which are not palmated, but round and pointed. This is the animal described by Catesby as the Cervus major Americanus, the stag of America, le Cerf de l’Amerique. But it differs from the Cervus as totally as does the palmated elk from the dama. And in fact it seems to stand in the same relation to the palmated elk, as the red deer does to the fallow. It has abounded in Virginia, has been seen, within my knowledge, on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge since the year 1765, is now common beyond those mountains, has been often brought to us and tamed, and its horns are in the hands of many. I should designate it as the “Alces Americanus cornibus teretibus.” It were to be wished, that naturalists, who are acquainted with the renne and elk of Europe, and who may hereafter visit the northern parts of America, would examine well the animals called there by the names of gray and black moose, caribou, original and elk. Monsieur de Buffon has done what could be done from the materials in his hands, toward clearing up the confusion introduced by the loose application of these names among the animals they are meant to designate. He reduces the whole to the renne and flat-horned elk. From all the information I have been able to collect, I strongly suspect they will be found to cover three, if not four distinct species of animals. I have seen skins of a moose, and of the caribou; they differ more from each other, and from that of the round-horned elk, than I ever saw two skins differ which belonged to different individuals of any wild species. These differences are in the color, length, and coarseness of the hair, and in the size, texture, and marks of the skin. Perhaps it will be found that there is, 1, the moose, black and gray, the former being said to be the male, and the latter the female; 2, the caribou or renne; 3, the flat-horned elk, or original; 4, the round-horned elk. Should this last, though possessing so nearly the characters of the elk, be found to be the same with the Cerf d’Ardennes or Brandhitz of Germany still there will remain the three species first enumerated.— T. J. [ In the edition of 1853 this is followed by: ] “See Catesby and Kalm—reason to believe that the moose is the palmated elk or original.”
Kalm ii. 340, i. 82.— T. J.
The Tapir is the largest of the animals peculiar to America. I collect his weight thus! Monsieur de Buffon says, XXIII. 274, that he is of the size of a Zebu, or a small cow. He gives us the measures of a Zebu, ib. 94, as taken by himself, viz. five feet seven inches from the muzzle to the root of the tail, and five feet one inch circumference behind the fore-legs. A bull, measuring in the same way six feet nine inches and five feet two inches, weighed six hundred pounds, VIII. 153. The Zebu then, and of course the Tapir, would weigh about five hundred pounds. But one individual of every species of European peculiars would probably weigh less than four hundred pounds. These are French measures and weights.— T. J.
VII. 432.— T. J.
VII. 474.— T. J.
In Williamsburg, April. 1769.— T. J.
VIII. 48, 55, 66.— T. J.
XVIII. 96.— T. J.
IX. 41.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “Perros en la Espanola han crecido en numero y en grandeza, desuerte, que plaga de aquella isla.—Acosta iv. 33.”
XXX. 219.— T. J. In the edition of 1853 is a further reference to: “xviii, 121.”
1 Clavigero, 118.— Footnote in edition of 1853.
XVIII, 146.— T. J.
Amer. Vesp., 13: “Fuora di misura lussurosi,” c., 108.— Footnote in edition of 1853.
Amer. Vesp., 30, 31, 39, 75, “Di buono sforzo, e digrande animo.”— Ib., 78.— Footnote in edition of 1853.
In so judicious an author as Don Ulloa, and one to whom we are indebted for the most precise information we have of South America, I did not expect to find such assertions as the following: “Los Indios vencidos son los mas cobardes y pusilanimes que se pueden vér:—se hacen inōcentes, se humillan hasta el desprecio, disculpan su inconsiderado arrojo, y con las suplicas y los ruegos dán seguras pruebas de su pusilanimidad.—ó lo que resieren las historias de la Conquista, sobre sus grandes acciones, es en un sendito figurado, ó el caracter de estas gentes no es ahora segun era entonces; pero lo que no tiene duda es, que las Naciones de la parte Septentrional subsisten en la misma libertad que siempre han tenido, sin haber sido sojuzgados por algun Principe extraño, y que viven segun su régimen y costumbres de toda la vida, sin que haya habido motivo para que muden de caracter; y en estos se vé lo mismo, que sucede en los del Peru, y de toda la América Meridional, reducidos, y que nunca lo han estado.” Noticias Americanas, Entretenimiento, xviii. § 1. Don Ulloa here admits, that the authors who have described the Indians of South America, before they were enslaved, had represented them as brave people, and therefore seems to have suspected that the cowardice which he had observed in those of the present race might be the effect of subjugation. But, supposing the Indians of North America to be cowards also, he concludes the ancestors of those of South America to have been so too, and, therefore, that those authors have given fictions for truth. He was probably not acquainted himself with the Indians of North America, and had formed his opinion from hear-say. Great numbers of French, of English, and of Americans, are perfectly acquainted with these people. Had he had an opportunity of inquiring of any of these, they would have told him, that there never was an instance known of an Indian begging his life when in the power of his enemies; on the contrary, that he courts death by every possible insult and provocation. His reasoning, then, would have been reversed thus: “Since the present Indian of North America is brave, and authors tell us that the ancestors of those of South America were brave also, it must follow that the cowardice of their descendants is the effect of subjugation and ill treatment.” For he observes, ib. § 27, that “los obrages los aniquillan por la inhumanidad con que se les trata.”— T. J.
A remarkable instance of this appeared in the case of the late Colonel Byrd, who was sent to the Cherokee nation to transact some business with them. It happened that some of our disorderly people had just killed one or two of that nation. It was therefore proposed in the council of the Cherokees that Colonel Byrd should be put to death, in revenge for the loss of their countrymen. Among them was a chief named Silòuee, who, on some former occasion, had contracted an acquaintance and friendship with Colonel Byrd. He came to him every night in his tent, and told him not to be afraid, they should not kill him. After many days’ deliberation, however, the determination was, contrary to Silòuee’s expectation, that Byrd should be put to death, and some warriors were dispatched as executioners. Silòuee attended them, and when they entered the tent, he threw himself between them and Byrd, and said to the warriors, “This man is my friend; before you get at him, you must kill me.” On which they returned, and the council respected the principle so much as to recede from their determination.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 is a reference to: “‘Vivono cento cinquanta anni.’—Amer. Vesp., iii. Amer. Vesp., 13.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote as follows: “Amer. Vesp., 13. ‘Sono donne molto generative,’ c.”
In the edition of 1853 an addition is here made to the text, as follows: “This practice commenced with the Spaniards with the first discovery of America.—[See Herrera, Amer. Vesp.].”
“Amer. Vesp., 9.”— Footnote in edition of 1853.
xviii., 146.— T. J.
Linn. Syst. Definition of a Man.— T. J.
The accuracy of this narrative was challenged by Luther Martin, a son-in-law of Cresap, in a Baltimore paper, March, 29, 1797. Upon Jefferson’s attention being called to this he wrote to Governor John Henry of Maryland, as follows:
Philadelphia, December 31, 1797.
“ Dear Sir, —Mr. Tazewell has communicated to me the inquiries you have been so kind as to make, relative to a passage in the Notes on Virginia, which has lately excited some newspaper publications. I feel, with great sensibility, the interest you take in this business, and with pleasure, go into explanations with one whose objects I know to be truth and justice alone. Had Mr. Martin thought proper to suggest to me, that doubts might be entertained of the transaction respecting Logan, as stated in the Notes on Virginia, and to inquire on what grounds that statement was founded, I should have felt myself obliged by the inquiry; have informed him candidly of the grounds, and cordially have co-operated in every means of investigating the fact, and correcting whatsoever in it should be found to have been erroneous. But he chose to step at once into the newspapers, and in his publications there and the letters he wrote to me, adopted a style which forbade the respect of an answer. Sensible, however, that no act of his could absolve me from the justice due to others, as soon as I found that the story of Logan could be doubted, I determined to inquire into it as accurately as the testimony remaining, after the lapse of twenty odd years, would permit, and that the result should be made known, either in the first new edition which should be printed of the Notes on Virginia, or by publishing an appendix. I thought that so far as that work had contributed to impeach the memory of Cresap, by handing on an erroneous charge it was proper it should be made the vehicle of retribution. Not that I was at all the author of the injury; I had only concurred, with thousands and thousands of others in believing a transaction on authority which merited respect. For the story of Logan is only repeated in the Notes on Virginia, precisely as it had been current for more than a dozen years before they were published. When Lord Dunmore returned from the expedition against the Indians, in 1774, he and his officers brought the speech of Logan, and related the circumstances of it. These were so affecting, and the speech itself so fine a morsel of eloquence, that it became the theme of every conversation, in Williamsburg particularly, and generally, indeed, wheresoever any of the officers resided or resorted. I learned it in Williamsburg, I believe at Lord Dunmore’s; and I find in my pocketbook of that year (1774) an entry of the narrative, as taken from the mouth of some person, whose name, however, is not noted, nor recollected, precisely in the words stated in the Notes on Virginia. The speech was published in the Virginia Gazette of that time, (I have it myself in the volume of gazettes of that year,) and though it was the translation made by the common interpreter, and in a style by no means elegant, yet it was so admired, that it flew through all the public papers of the continent, and through the magazines and other periodical publications of Great Britain; and those who were boys at that day will now attest, that the speech of Logan used to be given them as a school exercise for repetition. It was not until about thirteen or fourteen years after the newspaper publications, that the Notes on Virginia were published in America. Combating, in these, the contumelious theory of certain European writers, whose celebrity gave currency and weight to their opinions, that our country from the combined effects of soil and climate, degenerated animal nature, in general, and particularly the moral faculties of man, I considered the speech of Logan as an apt proof of the contrary, and used it as such; and I copied, verbatim, the narrative I had taken down in 1774, and the speech as it had been given us in a better translation by Lord Dunmore. I knew nothing of the Cresaps, and could not possibly have a motive to do them an injury with design. I repeated what thousands had done before, on as good authority as we have for most of the facts we learn through life, and such as, to this moment, I have seen no reason to doubt. That any body questioned it, was never suspected by me, till I saw the letter of Mr. Martin in the Baltimore paper. I endeavored then to recollect who among my contemporaries, of the same circle of society, and consequently of the same recollections, might still be alive; three and twenty years of death and dispersion had left very few. I remembered, however, that General Gibson was still living, and knew that he had been the translator of the speech. I wrote to him immediately. He, in answer, declares to me, that he was the very person sent by Lord Dunmore to the Indian town; that, after he had delivered his message there, Logan took him out to a neighboring wood; sat down with him, and rehearsing, with tears, the catastrophe of his family, gave him that speech for Lord Dunmore; that he carried it to Lord Dunmore; translated it to him; has turned to it in the Encyclopedia, as taken from the Notes on Virginia, and finds that it was his translation I had used, with only two or three verbal variations of no importance. These, I suppose, had risen in the course of successive copies. I cite General Gibson’s letter by memory, not having it with me; but I am sure I cite it substantially right. It establishes unquestionably, that the speech of Logan is genuine; and that being established, it is Logan himself who is author of all the important facts. ‘Colonel Cresap,’ says he, ‘in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children; there runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature.’ The person and the fact, in all its material circumstances, are here given by Logan himself. General Gibson, indeed, says, that the title was mistaken; that Cresap was a Captain, and not a Colonel. This was Logan’s mistake. He also observes, that it was on another water of the Ohio, and not on the Kanhaway, that his family was killed. This is an error which has crept into the traditionary account; but surely of but little moment in the moral view of the subject. The material question is, was Logan’s family murdered, and by whom? That it was murdered has not, I believe, been denied; but it was by one of the Cresaps, Logan affirms. This is a question that concerns the memories of Logan and Cresap; to the issue of which I am as indifferent as if I had never heard the name of either. I have begun and shall continue to inquire into the evidence additional to Logan’s, on which the fact was founded. Little, indeed, can now be heard of, and that little dispersed and distant. If it shall appear on inquiry, that Logan has been wrong in charging Cresap with the murder of his family, I will do justice to the memory of Cresap, as far as I have contributed to the injury, by believing and repeating what others had believed and repeated before me. If, on the other hand, I find that Logan was right in his charge, I will vindicate as far as my suffrage may go, the truth of a Chief, whose talents and misfortunes have attached to him the respect and commiseration of the world.
I have gone, my dear Sir, into this lengthy detail to satisfy a mind, in the candor and rectitude of which I have the highest confidence. So far as you may incline to use the communication for rectifying the judgments of those who are willing to see things truly as they are, you are free to use it. But I pray that no confidence which you may repose in any one, may induce you to let it go out of your hands, so as to get into a newspaper: against a contest in that field I am entirely decided. I feel extraordinary gratification, indeed, in addressing this letter to you, with whom shades of difference in political sentiment have not prevented the interchange of good opinion, nor cut off the friendly offices of society and good correspondence. This political tolerance is the more valued by me, who consider social harmony as the first of human felicities, and the happiest moments, those which are given to the effusions of the heart. Accept them sincerely, I pray you, from one who has the honor to be, with sentiments of high respect and attachment, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.”
From this time, Jefferson corresponded in many directions to obtain proof on the subject, and succeeded in securing a number of depositions and narratives relating to the frontier disturbances. A portion of these most favorable to Jefferson’s account, he printed in pamphlet form, three years later, with the title of:
An/Appendix/to the/Notes on Virginia/Relative to the Murder of Logan’s Family./ By Thomas Jefferson: / Philadelphia: / Printed by Samuel H. Smith./M,D,CCC./ [8vo. pp. 51].
This Appendix was included in all subsequent editions of the Notes on Virginia, but as it has little relation to Jefferson, the present editor merely prints Jefferson’s introduction to the documents and his conclusion.
“ Introduction to Appendix.
“The Notes on Virginia were written, in Virginia, in the years 1781 and 1782, in answer to certain queries proposed to me by Monsieur de Marbois, then secretary of the French legation in the United States; and a manuscript copy was delivered to him. A few copies, with some additions, were afterwards, in 1784, printed in Paris, and given to particular friends. In speaking of the animals of America, the theory of M. de Buffon, the Abbe Raynal, and others presented itself to consideration. They have supposed there is something in the soil, climate, and other circumstances of America, which occasions animal nature to degenerate, not excepting even the man, native or adoptive, physical or moral. This theory, so unfounded and degrading to one-third the globe, was called to the bar of fact and reason. Among other proofs adduced in contradiction of this hypothesis, the speech of Logan, an Indian chief, delivered to Lord Dunmore in 1774, was produced, as a specimen of the talents of the aboriginals of this country, and particularly of their eloquence; and it was believed that Europe had never produced anything superior to this morsel of eloquence. In order to make it intelligible to the reader, the transaction, on which it was founded, was stated, as it had been generally related in America at the time, and as I had heard it myself, in the circle of Lord Dunmore, and the officers who accompanied him; and the speech itself was given as it had, ten years before the printing of that book, circulated in the newspapers through all the then colonies, through the magazines of Great Britain, and periodical publications of Europe. For three and twenty years it passed uncontradicted; nor was it ever suspected that it even admitted contradiction. In 1797, however, for the first time, not only the whole transaction respecting Logan was affirmed in the public papers to be false, but the speech itself suggested to be a forgery, and even a forgery of mine, to aid me in proving that the man of America was equal in body and in mind, to the man of Europe. But wherefore the forgery; whether Logan’s or mine, it would still have been American. I should indeed consult my own fame if the suggestion, that this speech is mine, were suffered to be believed. He would have just right to be proud who could with truth claim that composition. But it is none of mine; and I yield it to whom it is due.
“On seeing then that this transaction was brought into question, I thought it my duty to make particular inquiry into its foundation. It was the more my duty, as it was alleged that, by ascribing to an individual therein named, a participation in the murder of Logan’s family, I had done an injury to his character, which it had not deserved. I had no knowledge personally of that individual. I had no reason to aim an injury at him. I only repeated what I had heard from others, and what thousands had heard and believed as well as myself; and which no one indeed, till then, had been known to question. Twenty-three years had now elapsed, since the transaction took place. Many of these acquainted with it were dead, and the living dispersed to very distant parts of the earth. Few of them were even known to me. To those however of whom I knew, I made application by letter; and some others, moved by a regard for truth and justice, were kind enough to come forward, of themselves, with their testimony. These fragments of evidence, the small remains of a mighty mass which time has consumed, are here presented to the public, in the form of letters, certificates, or affidavits, as they came to me. I have rejected none of these forms, nor required other solemnities from those whose motives and characters were pledges of their truth. Historical transactions are deemed to be well vouched by the simple declarations of those who have borne a part in them; and especially of persons having no interest to falsify or disfigure them. The world will now see whether they, or I, have injured Cresap, by believing Logan’s charge against him; and they will decide between Logan and Cresap, whether Cresap was innocent, and Logan a caluminator?
“In order that the reader may have a clear conception of the transactions, to which the different parts of the following declarations refer, he must take notice that they establish four different murders. 1. Of two Indians, a little above Wheeling. 2. Of others at Grave Creek, among whom were some of Logan’s relations. 3. The massacre at Baker’s bottom, on the Ohio, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, where were other relations of Logan. 4. Of those killed at the same place, coming in canoes to the relief of their friends. I place the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, against certain paragraphs of the evidence, to indicate the particular murder to which the paragraph relates and present also a small sketch or map of the principal scenes of these butcheries, for their more ready comprehension.”
The various documents are then printed, and the whole concluded by a summary as below:
“ From this testimony the following historical statement results:
“In April or May, 1774, a number of people being engaged in looking out for settlements on the Ohio, information was spread among them, that the Indians had robbed some of the land-jobbers, as those adventurers were called. Alarmed for their safety, they collected together at Wheeling Creek. Hearing there that there were two Indians and some traders a little above Wheeling, Captain Michael Cresap, one of the party, proposed to waylay and kill them. The proposition, though opposed, was adopted. A party went up the river, with Cresap at their head, and killed the two Indians.
“The same afternoon it was reported that there was a party of Indians on the Ohio, a little below Wheeling. Cresap and his party immediately proceeded down the river, and encamped on the bank. The Indians passed him peaceably, and encamped at the mouth of Grave Creek, a little below. Cresap and his party attacked them and killed several. The Indians returned the fire, and wounded one of Cresap’s party. Among the slain of the Indians were some of Logan’s
family. Colonel Zane indeed expresses a doubt of it; but it is affirmed by Houston and Chambers. Smith, one of the murderers, said they were known and acknowledged to be Logan’s friends and the party themselves generally said so; boasted of it in the presence of Cresap; pretended no provocation; and expressed their expectations that Logan would probably avenge their deaths.
“Pursuing these examples Daniel Great-house, and one Tomlinson, who lived on the opposite side of the river from the Indians, and were in habits of friendship with them, collected, at the house of Polke, on Cross Creek, about 16 miles from Baker’s Bottom, a party of 32 men. Their object was to attack a hunting encampment of Indians, consisting of men, women, and children, at the mouth of Yellow Creek, some distance above Wheeling. They proceeded, and when arrived near Baker’s Bottom, they concealed themselves, and Great-house crossed the river to the Indian camp. Being among them as a friend, he counted them, and found them too strong for an open attack with his force. While here, he was cautioned by one of the women not to stay, for that the Indian men were drinking, and having heard of Cresap’s murder of their relations at Grave Creek, were angry, and she pressed him in a friendly manner, to go home; whereupon, after inviting them to come over and drink, he returned to Baker’s, which was a tavern, and desired that when any of them should come to his house he would give them as much rum as they would drink. When his plot was ripe, and a sufficient number of them were collected at Baker’s, and intoxicated, he and his party fell on them and massacred the whole, except a little girl, whom they preserved as a prisoner. Among these was the very woman who had saved his life, by pressing him to retire from the drunken wrath of her friends, when he was spying their camp at Yellow Creek. Either she herself, or some other of the murdered women, was the sister of Logan, very big with child, and inhumanly and indecently butchered; and there were others of his relations who fell here.
“The party on the other side of the river, alarmed for their friends at Baker’s, on hearing the report of the guns, manned two canoes and sent them over. They were received, as they approached the shore, by a well-directed fire from Great-house’s party, which killed some, wounded others, and obliged the rest to put back. Baker tells us there were twelve killed, and six or eight wounded.
“This commenced the war, of which Logan’s war-club and note left in the house of a murdered family was the notification. In the course of it, during the ensuing summer, a great number of innocent men, women, and children, fell victims to the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians, till it was arrested in the autumn following by the battle at Point Pleasant, and the pacification of Lord Dunmore, at which the speech of Logan was delivered.
“Of the genuineness of that speech nothing need be said. It was known to the camp where it was delivered; it was given out by Lord Dunmore and his officers; it ran through the public papers of these States; was rehearsed as an exercise at schools; published in the papers and periodical works of Europe; and all this, a dozen years before it was copied into the Notes on Virginia. In fine, General Gibson concludes the question for ever, by declaring that he received it from Logan’s hand, delivered it to Lord Dunmore, translated it for him, and that the copy in the Notes on Virginia is a faithful copy.
“The popular account of these transactions, as stated in the Notes on Virginia, appears, on collecting exact information, imperfect and erroneus in its details. It was the belief of the day; but how far its errors were to the prejudice of Cresap, the reader will now judge. That he, and those under him, murdered two Indians above Wheeling; that they murdered a large number at Grave Creek, among whom were a part of the family and relations of Logan, cannot be questioned; and as little that this led to the massacre of the rest of the family at Yellow Creek. Logan imputed the whole to Cresap, in his war-note and peace-speech: the Indians generally imputed it to Cresap: Lord Dunmore and his officers imputed it to Cresap: the country, with one accord, imputed it to him: and whether he were innocent, let the universal verdict now declare.”
The whole question was again very fully discussed in Brantz Mayer’s Tah Gah Jute; or, Logan and Cresap, where certain evidence that had been suppressed by Jefferson is given. After a careful study of the controversy, it becomes evident that Jefferson’s account, in implicating Cresap, was unfounded in fact, and had Jefferson confessed his error, he would have acquitted himself of any responsibility for the false statement, for he merely, as George Rogers Clark wrote, repeated what was popular rumor of the day “on a subject which I know he was not the Author of.” But in subsequent editions the original version is unchanged, and by Jefferson’s suppression of proof against his view, he became truly answerable for the statement. How far this deception was induced by the personal and political antipathy between himself and Martin cannot be decided, but the whole matter was used as political ammunition by both parties, and presumably produced the usual verity that political controversy is famous for. Even in the latest revision of the Notes on Virginia, Jefferson made no change in the statement; but Washington, in the text he printed in his edition of Jefferson’s writings, took the liberty of changing the paragraph, to read:
“In the spring of the year 1774, a robbery was committed by some Indians on certain land-adventurers on the river Ohio. The whites in that quarter, according to their custom, undertook to punish this outrage in a summary way. Captain Michael Cresap, and a certain Daniel Greathouse, leading on these parties, surprised, at different times, travelling and hunting parties of the Indians, having their women and children with them, and murdered many. Among these were unfortunately the family of Logan, a chief celebrated in peace and war, and long distinguished as a friend of the whites”
Aside from the controversy over Cresap’s implication in the death of Logan’s kin, were the questions of the authenticity of the speech as reported by Jefferson, and the nativity of the maker. The earliest known version of the speech is contained in a letter from James Madison to William Bradford, dated January 20, 1775. A slightly varying version was printed in the Virginia Gazette of February 4, 1775, and was extensively copied by other papers. There are slight verbal variations in both from that printed by Jefferson, but none such as discredit his text. It is thus evident that the speech is thoroughly authentic. As to the origin of Logan, the balance of positive evidence seems to indicate that he was a half-breed; even without the additional generalization that the holding of Indians as slaves in the early colony days, the frequent capture and adoption of white children by the savages, as well as the less obvious mixture of races caused by the character and condition of the frontiersman and the moral standards of the Indians, had left few full-blooded Indians in the regions of white settlement and exploration. The superiority of the Indian in combating with the whites in the last fifty years of the eighteenth century, over the earlier periods, though the relative proportion of numbers had been entirely reversed, proves the change the race had undergone, and possibly explains an eloquence nowheres mentioned by the early travellers in America.
“Monsieur Buffon has indeed given an afflicting picture of human nature in his description of the man of America. But sure I am there never was a picture more unlike the original. He grants indeed that his stature is the same as that of the man of Europe. He might have admitted, that the Iroquois were larger, and the Lenapi, or Delawares, taller than people in Europe generally are. But he says their organs of generation are smaller and weaker than those of Europeans. Is this a fact? I believe not; at least it is an observation I never heard before.—‘They have no beard.’ Had he know the pains and trouble it cost the men to pluck out by the roots the hair that grows on their faces, he would have seen that nature had not been deficient in that respect. Every nation has its customs. I have see an Indian beau, with a looking-glass in his hand, examining his face for hours together, and plucking out by the roots every hair he could discover, with a kind of tweezer made of a piece of fine brass wire that had been twisted round a stick, and which he used with great dexterity.—‘They have no ardor for their females.’ It is true they do not indulge those excesses, nor discover that fondness which is customary in Europe; but this is not owing to a defect in nature but to manners. Their soul is wholly bent upon war. This is what procures them glory among the men, and makes them the admiration of the women. To this they are educated from their earliest youth. When they pursue game with ardor, when they bear the fatigues of the chase, when they sustain and suffer patiently hunger and cold; it is not so much for the sake of the game they pursue, as to convince their parents and the council of the nation that they are fit to be enrolled in the number of the warriors. The songs of the women, the dance of the warriors, the sage council of the chiefs, the tales of the old, the triumphal entry of the warriors returning with success from battle, and the respect paid to those who distinguish themselves in war, and in subduing their enemies; in short, everything they see or hear tends to inspire them with an ardent desire for military fame. If a young man were to discover a fondness for women before he has been to war, he would become the contempt of the men, and the scorn and ridicule of the women. Or were he to indulge himself with a captive taken in war, and much more were he to offer violence in order to gratify his lust, he would incur indelible disgrace. The seeming frigidity of the men, therefore, is the effect of manners, and not a defect of nature. Besides, a celebrated warrior is oftener courted by the females, than he has occasion to court; and this is a point of honor which the men aim at. Instances similar to that of Ruth and Boaz * are not uncommon among them. For though the women are modest and diffident, and so bashful that they seldom lift up their eyes, and scarce ever look a man full in the face, yet, being brought up in great subjection, custom and manners reconcile them to modes of acting, which, judged of by Europeans, would be deemed inconsistent with the rules of female decorum and propriety. I once saw a young widow, whose husband, a warrior, had died about eight days before, hastening to finish her grief, and who, by tearing her hair, beating her breast, and drinking spirits, made the tears flow in great abundance, in order that she might grieve much in a short space of time, and be married that evening to another young warrior. The manner in which this was viewed by the men and women of the tribe, who stood round, silent and solemn spectators of the scene, and the indifference with which they answered my question respecting it, convinced me that it was no unusual custom. I have known men advanced in years, whose wives were old and past childbearing, take young wives, and have children, though the practice of polygamy is not common. Does this savor of frigidity, or want of ardor for the female? Neither do they seem to be deficient in natural affection. I have seen both fathers and mothers in the deepest affliction, when their children have been dangerously ill: though I believe the affection is stronger in the descending than the ascending scale, and though custom forbids a father to grieve immoderately for a son slain in battle. ‘That they are timorous and cowardly,’ is a character with which there is little reason to charge them, when we recollect the manner in which the Iroquois met Monsieur —, who marched into their country; in which the old men, who scorned to fly, or to survive the capture of their town, braved death, like the old Romans in the time of the Gauls, and in which they soon after revenged themselves by sacking and destroying Montreal. But above all, the unshaken fortitude with which they bear the most excruciating tortures and death when taken prisoners, ought to exempt them from that character. Much less are they to be characterized as a people of no vivacity and who are excited to action or motion only by the calls of hunger and thirst. Their dances in which they so much delight, and which to an European would be the most severe exercise, fully contradicted this, not to mention their fatiguing marches, and the toil they voluntarily and cheerfully undergo in their military expeditions. It is true, that when at home, they do not employ themselves in labor or the culture of the soil; but this again is the effect of customs and manners, which have assigned that to the province of the women. But it is said, they are averse to society and a social life. Can anything be more inapplicable than this to a people who always live in towns or clans? Or can they be said to have no ‘republic,’ who conduct all their affairs in national councils, who pride themselves in their national character, who consider an insult or injury done to an individual by a stranger as done to the whole, and resent it accordingly? In short, this picture is not applicable to any nation of Indians I have ever known or heard of in North America.”— Charles Thomson in Appendix.
In the edition of 1853, a footnote adds: “No writer equally with M. De Buffon, proves the power of eloquence and uncertainty of theories. He takes any hypothesis whatever, or its reverse, and furnishes explanations equally specious and persuasive. Thus in his xviii volume, wishing to explain why the largest animals are found in the torrid zone, he assumes heat as the efficient principle of the animal volume. Speaking of America, he says: “Le terre y est froide impuissante a produire les principes actifs, a developer les germes des plus grandes quadrupedes auxquels il faut, pour croitre et se multiplier, toute la chaleur toute l’activité que le soleil peut donner a la terre amoureuse.” Page 156. “L’ardeur des hommes, et la grandeur des animaux dependent de la salubrité, et de la chaleur de l’air,” Ib. 160. In his Epochs again when it is become convenient to his theory to consider the bones of the mammoth found in the coldest regions, as the bones of the elephant, and necessary to explain how the elephant there should have been six times as large as that of the torrid zone, it is cold which produces animal volume. ‘Tout ce qu’il y a de colossal et de grand dans la nature, a eté formé dans les terres du Nord.’ 1 Epoques, 255. ‘C’est dans les regions de notre Nord que le nature vivante s’est elevee a ses plus grandes dimensions.’ Ib., 263.”
When Boaz had eaten and drank, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn; and Ruth came softly, and uncovered his feet, and laid her down. Ruth, iii. 7.
In connection with this, it is amusing to quote an anecdote told to Jefferson by Franklin, in Jefferson’s own words: “The Doctor told me at Paris the . . . following . . . of the Abbé Raynal. He had a party to dine with him one day at Passy, of whom one half were Americans, the other half French, and among the last was the Abbé. During the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals, and even of man, in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor at length noticing the accidental stature and position of his guests, at table, ‘Come,’ sayd he, ‘M. L’Abbé, let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here one half Americans, and one half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table, and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature has degenerated.’ It happened that his American guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while those of the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbé himself particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one.”
Has the world as yet produced more than two poets, acknowledged to be such by all nations? An Englishman only reads Milton with delight, an Italian, Tasso, a Frenchman the Henriade; a Portuguese, Camoens; but Homer and Virgil have been the rapture of every age and nation; they are read with enthusiasm in their originals by those who can read the originals, and in translations by those who cannot.— T. J.
There are various ways of keeping truth out of sight. Mr. Rittenhouse’s model of the planetary system has the plagiary appellation of an Orrery; and the quadrant invented by Godfrey, an American also, and with the aid of which the European nations traverse the globe, is called Hadley’s quadrant.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 an addition is made to this note as follows: “Huyghens gave the first description of an instrument of the former kind, under the name of Automatom Planetarium.—2 Montucla, 485.”
In a later edition of the Abbé Raynal’s work, he has withdrawn his censure from that part of the new world inhabited by the Federo-Americans; but has left it still on the other parts. North America has always been more accessible to strangers than South. If he was mistaken then as to the former, he may be so as to the latter. The glimmerings which reach us from South America enable us to see that its inhabitants are held under the accumulated pressure of slavery, superstition and ignorance. Whenever they shall be able to rise under this weight, and to show themselves to the rest of the world, they will probably show they are like the rest of the world. We have not yet sufficient evidence that there are more lakes and fogs in South America than in other parts of the earth. As little do we know what would be their operation on the mind of man. That country has been visited by Spaniards and Portuguese chiefly, and almost exclusively. These, going from a country of the old world remarkably dry in its soil and climate, fancied there were more lakes and fogs in South America than in Europe. An Inhabitant of Ireland, Sweden, or Finland would have formed the contrary opinion. Had South America then been discovered and seated [ sic ] by a people from a fenny country, it would probably have been represented as much dryer than the old world. A patient pursuit of facts, and cautious combination and comparison of them, is the drudgery to which man is subjected by his Maker, if he wishes to attain sure knowledge.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “The Bald Coot or Coot, is the Fulica of Linnæus, and the Foulque of the Encyclop. Meth. differing from the description of the latter only in the color of its feet and legs, which are olive green, without any circle of red, and that of the bill a faint carnation, brown at the point, and the membrane on the forehead of a very dark purple. It is distinguished from the Gallinula chloropis Poule d’eau, Water-hen, Hydro-gallina, chiefly by the festooned web bordering the toes.”
“Wren” is struck out in edition of 1787.
Altered to “which” in edition of 1787.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “See Herrera, Dec. 1, 1. 10, c. s. ‘Descubierta Yucatan, se hallò abundania de cera y miel.’ And ib. c. 9. ‘Ay abispas y abexas, como las de Castilla, aunque estas son menores, y pican con mas furia.’—Ib. Dec. 2, 1. 3, c. i.”
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote: “See 1 Clavigero, 107. ‘En los terminos de Guayaquil ay abejas, que enxambran y criam miel en el hucco de los arboles son poco mayores que moscas, la cera y miel que labran es rubia y aunque tiene buengusto no es tal como el de Castilla.’ Herr. 5, 10, 10.”
1. 126.— T. J.
An additional paragraph is added in the edition of 1853, stating: “We have it from the Indians also that the common domestic fly is not originally of America, but came with the whites from Europe.” To this is subjoined the following footnote: “We have the same account from South America. Condamine in his Voyage de la riviere Amazones, pa. 95, says: ‘Divers Indiens ont rapporté qu’ils avoient vu sur les bords de la riviere de Coari dans la haut des terres, un pays decouvert, des mouches et quantité de betes à cornes, objects nouveaux pour eux, et qui prouvent que les sources deces rivieres arrosent des pays voisins des colonies Espagnoles de haut Perou.’”
In the edition of 1853 the following additional matter is here inserted: [supposed to have been made at Monticello.]
1789 | Oct’r 1 | Ice | Snow Birds | Spoiled tobacco on the scaffold. |
1792 | Sep. 21 | None | None | Tobacco destroyed totally out of green belt. |
1808 | Sep. 27 | None | None | Tobacco, except in green belt, untouched. |
1816 | Oct’r 7 | thin ice | Snow Birds | Late corn spoiled; all safe in green belt. |
1823 | Sep. 29 | None | None | Green belt unaffected; pumpkin vine frozen. |
In the month of August, 1801, I carefully examined the temperature of my well water in the District of Maine, and found it at 52 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer.
The depth of the well is 28 feet; the depth of the water at this time was 4 feet; the latitude of the place is 44 22 North; longitude about 69 40 W.
In September, 1802, I examined with the same instrument, and with equal care, the temperature of the well water, where I live, on the Capitol hill, and found it at 59° of Fahrenheit. This well is upwards of 40 feet in depth, and had at the time about 7 or 8 feet of water.
My well, in Maine, is an open draw well, without a pump; the well on the Capitol hill has a pump, and is close covered.
The temperature of the water of Kennebeck river, the latter part of August, was 72½ by Fahrenheit. H. Dearborn.
See a Note at the end of the Work.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 is added: “and in a single and most remarkable instance, on the 4th of July, 1793, in Orange county, it fell from 84° to 74° in ten minutes.”
At Paris, in 1753, the mercury in Reaumur’s thermometer was at 30½ above 0., and in 1776, it was at 16 below 0. The extremities of heat and cold therefore at Paris, are greater than at Williamsburg, which is in the hottest part of Virginia.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 this footnote is added:
“The following observations on heat and cold, as they affect the animal body, may not be unacceptable to those who have not paid particular attention to the subject.
“The living body, (not like the dead one, which assumes the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere,) maintains within itself a steady heat of about 96° of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, varying little with the ordinary variations of the atmosphere. This heat is principally supplied by respiration. The vital air, or oxygen of the atmospheric fluid inhaled, is separated by the lungs from the azotic and carbonic parts, and is absorbed by them; the caloric is disengaged, diffused through the mass of the body, and absorbed from the skin by the external air coming into contact with it. If the external air is of a high temperature, it does not take up the superfluous heat of the body fast enough, and we complain of too much heat; if it is very cold, it absorbs the heat too fast, and produces the sensation of cold. To remedy this, we interpose a covering, which acting as a strainer, lets less air come into contact with the body, and checks the escape of the vital heat. As the atmospheric air becomes colder, more or thicker coverings are used, till no more than the requisite portion of heat is conducted from the body. As it would be inconvenient in the day to be burthened with a mass of clothing entirely equivalent to great degrees of cold, we have resort to fires and warm rooms to correct the state of the atmosphere, as a supplement of our clothing. If we have not the opportunity, and the cold is excessive, the thinner parts as the ear, the nose, the fingers and toes lose heat till they freeze, and, if the cold be sufficient, the whole body is reduced in heat, till death ensues: as sailors experience who escape from shipwreck, in Winter storms, on desert shores, where no fire can be found.
“Of the substances we use for covering, linen seems the openest strainer for admission of air to the body, and the most copious conductor of heat from it; and is therefore considered as a cool clothing. Cotton obstructs still more the passage of both fluids, and wool more than cotton: it is called therefore a worse conductor of heat, and warmer clothing. Next to this are the furs, and the most impermeable of all for heat and air are feathers and down, and especially the down of the Eider duck.—(Anas mollissima.) Hence the insensibility to cold of the beasts with shaggy hair, or fine fur, and of the birds in proportion as they are provided with down and soft feathers: as the swan, goose, duck.
“Among the substances which, as being bad conductors of heat, foment and warm the animal body, are the leaves of the Espeletia Frailexon, a plant newly discovered by the great naturalist and traveller Baron Humboldt, on the mountains of South America, at the height of 2,450 toises above the sea. These leaves being furnished abundantly with a soft down, restore immediately to their due warmth the hands, feet, or other members benumbed with cold; and collected as a bed, protect from death the Indian benighted in those regions of extreme cold. The same scientific traveller, by analysis of the air, at different heights on the mountain of Chimborazo which he ascended to the height of 3,036 toises, (546 toises higher than had ever been done by man before, and within 224 toises of its top) found that the oxygen being specifically heavier than the azotic part of the atmosphere, its proportion lessened in that ascent 27 or 28 to 19½ hundredth parts. The same circumstance had been before observed by Saussure, Pini and Rebout, on the high mountains of Europe, and must be among the principal causes of the degree in which the animal body is affected with cold in situations more or less elevated.
“In addition to the effect of vital air, as the vehicle of animal heat, we may note that it is also the immediate cause, or primum mobile of life. For, entering by respiration into the air-cells of the lungs, divided from those of the blood but by a thin membrane, it infuses through that a stimulus into the blood, which, acting on the irritable fibres of the heart, excites mechanically the action and reaction of that muscle. By these the blood is propelled, and received again in a course of constant circulation and vital action communicated and maintained through all the system. Intercept vital air from the lungs, the action of the heart ceases for want of stimulus, the current of the blood, unaided, yields to the resistance of its channels, all the vital motions are suspended, the body becomes an inanimated lump of matter.”
“Musschenb. has seen ice produced at 41°.—2 Muss. 1, 507.”— Footnote in edition of 1853.
In the edition of 1853 this passage is altered from this point on to read: “having seldom during that time seen them at Monticello during Summer.”
“Dr. Shaw in his physical observations on Syria, speaking of the easterly winds, called by seamen Leventers, says ‘We are likewise to observe further with regard to these strong easterly winds, that vessels, or any other objects which are seen at a distance appear to be vastly magnified, or loom, according to the mariners expression.’—Shaw’s travels, 362.”— Footnote in edition of 1853.
Years. | Settlers Imported. | Census of Inhabitants. | Census of Tythes. |
1607 | 100 | ........ | ........ |
.. | ........ | 40 | ........ |
.. | 120 | ........ | ........ |
1608 | ........ | 130 | ........ |
.. | 70 | ........ | ........ |
1609 | ........ | 490 | ........ |
.. | 16 | ........ | ........ |
.. | ........ | 60 | ........ |
1610 | 150 | ........ | ........ |
.. | ........ | 200 | ........ |
1611 | 3 ship loads. | ........ | ........ |
.. | 300 | ........ | ........ |
1612 | 80 | ........ | ........ |
1617 | ........ | 400 | ........ |
1618 | 200 | ........ | ........ |
.. | 40 | ........ | ........ |
.. | ........ | 600 | ........ |
1619 | 1,216 | ........ | ........ |
1621 | 1,300 | ........ | ........ |
1622 | ........ | 3,800 | ........ |
.. | ........ | 2.500 | ........ |
1628 | ........ | 3,000 | ........ |
1632 | ........ | ........ | 2,000 |
1644 | ........ | ........ | 4,822 |
1645 | ........ | ........ | 5,000 |
1652 | ........ | ........ | 7,000 |
1654 | ........ | ........ | 7,209 |
1700 | ........ | ........ | 22,000 |
1748 | ........ | ........ | 82,100 |
1759 | ........ | ........ | 105 000 |
1772 | ........ | ........ | 153,000 |
1782 | ........ | 567,614 | ........ |
In the edition of 1853 is added at this point:
“1756 | 173,316 inhabitants. |
1764 | 250,000 |
1774 | 300,000 |
[See Boston Patriot, Sept. 16, 1809.] Pownals authority quoted in J. Adams 17th letter.”
“The first settlement of Europeans in America was by the Spaniards in St. Domingo in 1493. So early as 1501 we find they had already got into the habit of carrying the negroes there as slaves, and in 1503 they had become so inconvenient, that Ovando, the Governor, put a stop to their importation. Herrera. Dec. 1, b. 2, ch. 10: B. 4, ch. 12; B. 5, ch. 12; but in 1511 they were again fully in the same habit. The king’s instructions at that date were “Que se buscasse forma como se llevassen muchos negroes Guinea, porque era mas util el trabajo de un negro, que de quatro Indios.—Herrera. Dec. 1, L., 9, c. 5; Dec. 2, L., 2, c. 8, 20.”— Footnote in edition of 1853.
From this note it is apparent that Jefferson must have prepared some of his memoranda while he was still governor of Virginia, or before the arrival of the French fleet.
In the edition of 1787 and subsequent ones the words following “so many little societies” are omitted, and a paragraph inserted as follows:
“This practice results from the circumstance of their having never submitted themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of government. Their only controls are their manners, and that moral sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and feeling in every man, makes a part of his nature. An offence against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or, where the case is serious, as that of murder, by the individuals whom it concerns. Imperfect as this species of coercion may seem, crimes are very rare among them, insomuch that were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care of the wolves. It will be said, that great societies cannot exist without government. The savages, therefore, break them into small ones.”
Smith.— T. J.
Evans.— T. J.
“As far as I have been able to learn, the country from the seacoast to the Alleghany, and from the most southern waters of James River, now in the State of Maryland, was occupied by three different nations of Indians, each of which spoke a different language, and were under separate and distinct governments. What the original or real names of those nations were, I have not been able to learn with certainty; but by us they are distinguished by the names of Powhatans, Mannahoacs, now commonly called Tuscaroras. The Powhatans, who occupied the country from the sea shore up to the falls of the rivers, were a powerful nation, and seem to have consisted of seven tribes, five on the western and two on the eastern shore. Each of these tribes was subdivided into towns, families, or clans, who lived together. All the nations of Indians in North America lived in the hunter state, and depended for subsistence on hunting, fishing, and the spontaneous fruits of the earth, and a kind of grain which was planted and gathered by the women, and is now known by the name of Indian corn. Long potatoes, pumpkins of various kinds, and squashes, were also found in use among them. They had no flocks, herds, or tamed animals of any kind. Their government is a kind of patriarchal confederacy. Every town or family has a chief, who is distinguished by a particular title, and whom we commonly call ‘Sachem.’ The several towns or families that compose a tribe, have a chief who presides over it, and the several tribes composing a nation have a chief who presides over the whole nation. These chiefs are generally men advanced in years, and distinguished by their prudence and abilities in council. The matters which merely regard a town or family are settled by the chief and principal men of the town; those which regard a tribe, such as the appointment of head warriors or captains, and settling differences between different towns and families, are regulated at a meeting or council of the chiefs from the several towns; and those which regard the whole nation, such as the making war, concluding peace, or forming alliances with the neighboring nations, are deliberated on and determined in a national council composed of the chiefs of the tribe, attended by the head warriors and a number of the chiefs from the towns, who are his counsellors. In every town there is a council house, where the chief and old men of the town assemble, when occasion requires, and consult what is proper to be done. Every tribe has a fixed place for the chiefs of the towns to meet and consult on the business of the tribe; and in every nation there is what they call the central council house, or central council fire, where the chiefs of the several tribes, with the principal warriors, convene to consult and determine on their national affairs. When any matter is proposed in the national council, it is common for the chiefs of the several tribes to consult thereon apart with their counsellors, and when they have agreed, to deliver the opinion of the tribe at the national council; and, as their government seems to rest wholly on persuasion, they endeavor, by mutual concessions, to obtain unanimity. Such is the government that still subsists among the Indian nations bordering upon the United States. Some historians seem to think, that the dignity of office of Sachem was hereditary. But that opinion does not appear to be well founded. The sachem or chief of the tribe seems to be by election. And sometimes persons who are strangers, and adopted into the tribe, are promoted to this dignity, on account of their abilities. Thus on the arrival of Captain Smith, the first founder of the colony of Virginia, Opechancanough, who was Sachem or chief of the Chickahominies, one of the tribes of the Powhatans, is said to have been of another tribe, and even of another nation, so that no certain account could be obtained of his origin or descent. The chiefs of the nation seem to have been by a rotation among the tribes. Thus when Captain Smith, in the year 1609, questioned Powhatan (who was the chief of the nation, and whose proper name is said to have been Wahunsonacock) respecting the succession, the old chief informed him, ‘that he was very old, and had seen the death of all his people thrice * ; that not one of these generations were then living except himself; that he must soon die, and the succession descend in order to his brother Opichapan, Opechancanough, and Catataugh, and then to his two sisters, and their two daughters.’ But these were appellations designating the tribes in the confederacy. For the persons named are not his real brothers, but the chiefs of different tribes. Accordingly in 1618, when Powhatan died, he was succeeded by Opichapan, and after his decease, Opechancanough became chief of the nation. I need only mention another instance to show that the chiefs of the tribes claimed this kindred with the head of the nation. In 1622, when Raleigh Crashaw was with Japazaw, the Sachem or chief of the Potomacs, Opechancanough, who had great power and influence, being the second man in the nation, and next in succession to Opichapan, and who was a bitter but secret enemy to the English, and wanted to engage his nation in a war with them, sent two baskets of beads to the Potomac chief, and desired him to kill the Englishman that was with him. Japazaw replied, that the English were his friends, and Opichapan his brother, and that therefore there should be no blood shed between them by his means. It is also to be observed, that when the English first came over, in all their conferences with any of the chiefs, they constantly heard him make mention of his brother, with whom he must consult, or to whom he referred them, meaning thereby either the chief of the nation, or the tribes in confederacy. The Manahoacks are said to have been a confederacy of four tribes, and in alliance with the Monacans, in the war which they were carrying on against the Powhatans.
“To the northward of these there was another powerful nation which occupied the country from the head of the Chesapeake bay up to the Kittatinney mountain, and as far eastward as Connecticut river, comprehending that part of New York which lies between the Highlands and the ocean, all the State of New Jersey, that part of Pennsylvania which is watered, below the range of the Kittatinney mountains, by the rivers or streams falling into the Delaware, and the county of Newcastle in the State of Delaware, as far as Duck creek. It is to be observed, that the nations of Indians distinguished their countries one from another by natural boundaries, such as ranges of mountains or streams of water. But as the heads of rivers frequently interlock, or approach near to each other, as those who live upon a stream claim the country watered by it, they often encroached on each other, and this is a constant source of war between the different nations. The nation occupying the tract of country last described, called themselves Lenopi. The French writers call them Loups; and among the English they are now commonly called Delawares. This nation or confederacy consisted of five tribes, who all spoke one language. 1. The Chihohocki, who dwelt on the west side of the river now called Delaware, a name which it took from Lord De la War, who put into it on his passage from Virginia in the year —, but which by the Indians was called Chihohocki. 2. The Wanami, who inhabit the country called New Jersey, from the Rariton to the sea. 3. The Munsey, who dwelt on the upper streams of the Delaware, from the Kittatinney mountains down to the Lehigh or western branch of the Delaware. 4. The Wabinga, who are sometimes called River Indians, sometimes Mohickanders, and who had their dwelling between the west branch of Delaware and Hudson’s river, from the Kittatinney Ridge down to the Rariton; and 5. The Mahiccon, or Manhattan, who occupied Staten Island, York Island (which from its being the principal seat of their residence was formerly called Manhattan), Long Island, and that part of New York and Connecticut which lies between Hudson and Connecticut rivers, from the highland, which is a continuation of the Kittatinney Ridge down to the Sound. This nation had a close alliance with the Shawanese, who lived on the Susquehanna and to the westward of that river, as far as the Alleghany mountains, and carried on a long war with another powerful nation or confederacy of Indians, which lived to the north of them between the Kittatinney mountains or highlands, and the Lake Ontario, and who call themselves Mingoes, and are called by the French writers Iroquois, by the English the Five Nations, and by the Indians to the southward, with whom they were at war, Massawomacs. This war was carrying on in its greatest fury, when Captain Smith first arrived in Virginia. The Mingo Warriors had penetrated down the Susquehannah to the mouth of it. In one of his excursions up the bay, at the mouth of the Susquehannah, in 1608, Captain Smith met with six or seven of their canoes full of warriors, who were coming to attack their enemies in the rear. In an excursion which he had made a few weeks before, up the Rappahannock, and in which he had a skirmish with a party of the Manahoacs, and taken a brother of one of their chiefs prisoner, he first heard of this nation. For when he asked the prisoner why his nation attacked the English? the prisoner said, because his nation had heard that the English came from under the world to take their world from them. Being asked, how many worlds he knew? he said, he knew but one, which was under the sky that covered him, and which consisted of Powhatans, the Manakins, and the Massawomacs. Being questioned concerning the latter, he said, they dwelt on a great water to the North, that they had many boats, and so many men, that they waged war with all the rest of the world. The Mingo confederacy then consisted of five tribes; three who are the elder, to wit, the Senecas, who live to the West, the Mohawks to the East, and the Onondagas between them; and two who are called the younger tribes, namely, the Cayugas and Oneidas. All these tribes speak one language, and were then united in a close confederacy, and occupied the tract of country from the east end of Lake Erie to Lake Champlain, and from the Kittatinney and Highlands to the Lake Ontario and the river Cadaraqui, or St. Lawrence. They had some time before that, carried on a war with a nation, who lived beyond the lakes, and were called Adirondacks. In this war they were worsted; but having made a peace with them, through the intercession of the French who were then settling Canada, they turned their arms against the Lenopi; and as this war was long and doubtful, they, in the course of it, not only exerted their whole force, but put in practice every measure which prudence or policy could devise to bring it to a successful issue. For this purpose they bent their course down the Susquehannah, and warring with the Indians in their way, and having penetrated as far as the mouth of it, they, by the terror of their arms, engaged a nation, now known by the name of Nanticocks, Conoys, and Tuteloes, and who lived between Chesapeake and Delaware bays, and bordering on the tribe of Chihohocki, to enter into an alliance with them. They also formed an alliance with the Monicans, and stimulated them to a war with the Lenopi and their confederates. At the same time the Mohawks carried on a furious war down the Hudson against the Mohiccons and River Indians, and compelled them to purchase a temporary and precarious peace, by acknowledging them to be their superiors, and paying an annual tribute. The Lenopi being surrounded with enemies, and hard pressed, and having lost many of their warriors, were at last compelled to sue for peace, which was granted to them on the condition that they should put themselves under the protection of the Mingoes, confine themselves to raising corn, hunting for the subsistence of their families, and no longer have the power of making war. This is what the Indians call making them women. And in this condition the Lenopi were when William Penn first arrived and began the settlement of Pennsylvania in 1682.”— Charles Thomson in Appendix.
This is one generation more than the poet ascribes to the life of Nestor:
The os sacrum.— T. J.
In the edition of 1853 a footnote is added as follows:
“The customs of burying the dead in burrows was anciently very prevalent. Homer describes the ceremony of raising one by the Greeks.
“And Herodotus VII., 117, mentions an instance of the same practice in the army of Xerxes on the death of Artachæas.”
“From the figurative language of the Indians, as well as from the practice of those we are still acquainted with, it is evident that it was and still continues to be, a constant custom among the Indians to gather up the bones of the dead, and deposit them in a particular place. Thus, when they make peace with any nation with whom they have been at war, after burying the hatchet, they take up the belt of wampum, and say, ‘We now gather up all the bones of those who have been slain, and bury them,’ c. See all the treaties of peace. Besides, it is customary when any of them die at a distance from home, to bury them, and afterwards to come and take up the bones and carry them home. At a treaty which was held at Lancaster with the Six Nations, one of them died, and was buried in the woods a little distance from the town. Some time after a party came and took up the body, separated the flesh from the bones by boiling and scraping them clean, and carried them to be deposited in the sepulchres of their ancestors. The operation was so offensive and disagreeable, that nobody could come near them while they were performing it.”— Charles Thomson in Appendix.
In the edition of 1853 is a footnote:
“In the notes on Virginia, the great diversity of languages appearing radically different, which are spoken by the red men of America, is supposed to authorize a supposition that their settlement is more remote than that of Asia by its red inhabitants; but it must be confessed that the mind finds it difficult to conceive that so many tribes have inhabited it from so remote an antiquity as would be necessary to have divided them into language so radically different. I will therefore hazard a conjecture as such, and only to be estimated at what it may be worth. We know that the Indians consider it as dishonorable to use any language but their own. Hence in their councils with us, though some of them may have been in situations which from convenience or necessity, have obliged them to learn our language well, yet they refuse to confer in it, and always insist on the intervention of an interpreter, though he may understand neither language so well as themselves; and this fact is as general as our knowledge of the tribes of North America. When therefore a fraction of a tribe from domestic feuds had broken off from its main body, to which it is held by no law or compact, and has gone to another settlement, may it not be the point of honor with them not to use the language of those with whom they have quarrelled, but to have one of their own. They have use but for few words, and possess but few. It would require but a small effort of the mind to invent these, and to acquire the habit of using them. Perhaps this hypothesis presents less difficulty than that of so many radically distinct languages, preserved by such handfuls of men, from an antiquity so remote that no data we possess will enable us to calculate it”
In the edition of 1787, and subsequent ones, the following paragraph is inserted:
“But imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues spoken in America, it suffices to discover the following remarkable fact * : Arranging them under the radical ones to which they may be palpably traced, and doing the same by those of the red men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty in America, for one in Asia, of those radical languages, so called because if they were ever the same they have lost all resemblance to one another. A separation into dialects may be the work of a few ages only, but for two dialects to recede from one another till they have lost all vestiges of their common origin, must require an immense course of time; perhaps not less than many people give to the age of the earth. A greater number of those radical changes of language having taken place among the red men of America, proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia.”
“Mattere di Amer. Vesp. 81.—Ib. 11, 12, 4. Clavigero, 21.” Note in edition of 1853.
“The Osweàtchies, Connosedàgoes and Cohunnegagoes, or as they are commonly called, Caghnewàgos, are of the Mingo or Six Nation Indians, who, by the influence of the French missionaries, have been separated from their nation, and induced to settle there.
“I do not know of what nation the Augquàgahs are, but suspect they are a family of the Senecas.
“The Nanticocks and Conòies were formerly of a nation that lived at the head of Chesapeake bay, and who, of late years, have been adopted into the Mingo or Iroquois confederacy, and make a seventh nation. The Monacans or Tuscaroras, who were taken into the confederacy in 1712, making the sixth.
“The Saponies are families of the Wanamies, who removed from New-Jersey, and with the Mohiccons, Munsies, and Delawares, belonging to the Lenopi nation. The Mingos are a war colony from the Six Nations; so are the Cohunnewagos.
“Of the rest of the Northern tribes I never have been able to learn anything certain. But all accounts seem to agree in this, that there is a very powerful nation, distinguished by a variety of names taken from the several towns or families, but commonly called Tawas or Ottawas, who speak one language, and live round and on the waters that fall into the western lakes, and extend from the waters of the Ohio quite to the waters falling into Hudson’s bay.”— Charles Thomson in Appendix.