To your fourth query, you will excuse my answering more, than that your conjecture is not far out of the way. My letter will inform you why I must still delay sending what I promised you the 14th ultimo. In the meantime, Sir, you may add to indigo and rice, tobacco, logwood, redwood, sugar, coffee, cotton, and other West India produce, which pass through the hands of the North Americans, in payment for their supplies to the West India Islands, which cannot exist without their produce. Also, in course of trade, spermaceti oil and salt-fish may be supplied to Prussia and Germany as cheap, or cheaper from the Colonies, than from Holland and Germany. The United Colonies exported to Europe chiefly, indeed, to Great Britain, fish-oil, whalebone, spermaceti, furs, and peltry of every kind, masts, spars, and timber, pot and pearl ashes, flax-seed, beef, pork, butter and cheese, horses and oxen; to the West Indies chiefly, wheat-flour, bread, rye, Indian corn, lumber, tobacco, iron, naval stores, beeswax, rice, and indigo, &c. &c. to the amount of more than L4,000,000 sterling annually, and for some years past, and received the pay in European manufactures; and when I remind you that the inhabitants of that country double their number every twenty years, and inform you that this exportation has increased for the last century in the same ratio, you will be able to form some idea of this commerce, and of how much importance it is to Europe. I hope, by the coming post, to send you some favorable news from America, and I may not add to this without missing the post. I am, with the most sincere esteem, dear Sir, your most obedient servant, SILAS DEANE. * * * * * SILAS DEANE TO C. W. F. DUMAS. Paris, October 9th, 1776. Sir,