Your kind answer of the 16th entirely satisfies my doubts as to the employment of the navy, if kept within striking distance of our coast; and shows how erroneous views are apt to be with those who have not all in view. Yet as I know from experience that profitable suggestions sometimes come from lookers on, they may be usefully tolerated, provided they do not pretend to the right of an answer. They would cost very dear indeed were they to occupy the time of a high officer in writing when he should be acting. I intended no such trouble to you, my dear Sir, and were you to suppose I expected it, I must cease to offer a thought on our public affairs. Although my entire confidence in their direction prevents my reflecting on them but accidentally, yet sometimes facts, and sometimes ideas occur, which I hazard as worth the trouble of reading but not of answering. Of this kind was my suggestion of the facts which I recollected as to the defence of the Chesapeake, and of what had been contemplated at the time between the Secretaries of War and the Navy and myself. If our views were sound, the object might be effected in one year, even of war, and at an expense which is nothing compared to the population and productions it would cover. We are here laboring under the most extreme drought ever remembered at this season. We have had but one rain to lay the dust in two months. That was a good one, but was three weeks ago. Corn is but a few inches high and dying. Oats will not yield their seed. Of wheat, the hard winter and fly leave us about two-thirds of an ordinary crop. So that in the lotteries of human life you see that even farming is but gambling. We have had three days of excessive heat. The thermometer on the 16th was at 92°, on the 17th 92½°, and yesterday at 93°. It had never before exceeded 92½ at this place; at least within the periods of my observations. Ever and affectionately yours. TO COLONEL MONROE. MONTICELLO, June 18, 1813.