esteem, and satisfactory recollections of the harmony and friendship with which we have run our race together; and I pray you now to accept sincere assurances of it, and of my great respect and attachment. TO MESSRS. MAESE, LEYBERT AND DICKERSON, OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. WASHINGTON, January 9, 1808. GENTLEMEN,--I duly received your favor of the 1st instant, informing me that at an election of officers of the American Philosophical Society, held at their hall on that day, they were pleased unanimously to elect me as their President for the ensuing year. I repeat, with great sensibility, my thanks to the Society for these continued proofs of their good will, and my constant regret that distance and other duties deny me the pleasure of performing at their meetings the functions assigned to me, and of enjoying an intercourse with them which of all others would be the most gratifying to me. Thus circumstanced I can only renew assurances of my devotion to the objects of the Institution, and that I shall avail myself with peculiar pleasure of every occasion which may occur of promoting them, and of being useful to the Society. I beg leave through you, Gentlemen, to present them the homage of my dutiful respects, and that you will accept yourselves, the assurances of my high consideration and esteem. TO MR. GALLATIN. January 10, 1808. I find Bastrop's case less difficult than I had expected. My view of it is this: The Governor of Louisiana being desirous of introducing the culture of wheat into that province, engages Bastrop as an agent for carrying that object into effect. He agrees to lay off twelve leagues square on the Washita and Bayou liard, as a settlement for the culture of wheat, to which Bastrop is to bring five hundred families, each of which families is to have four hundred arpens of the land; the residue of the twelve leagues square, we may understand, was to be Bastrop's premium. The government was to bear the expenses of bringing these emigrants from New Madrid, and was to allow them rations for six months,--Bastrop undertaking to provide the rations, and the government paying a real and a half for each.