“On the 20th of June Mr. Guillemard and myself set out for the mountains; Monticello, the habitation of Mr. Jefferson, was the object of this part of our journey. Messrs. Graham & Havens, merchants of Richmond, and owners of a coal mine at Dover, near by, were so kind as to conduct us thither. This mine is scarcely wrought. There is not one person throughout America versed in the art of working mines. The country between Dover and Goochland Courthouse, where we stopped at night, is more variegated than before; you find there more heights, and some fine prospects, especially on Mount Pleasant, which commands a wide extensive vale entirely cleared, and full of houses and clumps of trees. This day was a court day at Goochland. It was near 9 o’clock at night when I arrived. At the inn the company easily discerned that I was a Frenchman. There arrived a large bowl of grog, and we drank one after another, toasting the French, France, America, Virginia, and M. de la Fayette, whose name they mentioned with enthusiasm. In spite of my little disposition for drinking, I was obliged two or three times to drink in my turn, for it was absolutely necessary to empty the bowl. It was with great difficulty I prevented the arrival of a second. The road grows duller after you leave Goochland Courthouse. The plantations become constantly less frequent and less extensive. Inns are very scarce on this road; the next is nearly seventeen miles distant from that where we passed the night. I went a mile farther on, to stop at one which I knew was kept by a Frenchman. After having spent nearly the whole day there, we went ten miles farther on to an ordinary, where we stopped for the night, and the next day proceeded to Monticello. “Mr. Jefferson’s house commands one of the most extensive prospects you can meet with; when finished by his new plan, it will certainly deserve to be ranked with the most pleasant mansions in France or England. He has divided all his land under culture into four farms, and every farm into seven fields of forty acres. His system of rotation embraces seven years. Mr. Jefferson possesses one of those excellent threshing machines, which a few years since were invented in Scotland. He has a drilling machine, invented in his own neighborhood. Mr. Jefferson, in common with all landholders in America, imagines that his habitation is more healthy than any other; that it is as healthful as any in the finest parts of France. In private life Mr. Jefferson displays a mild, easy, and obliging manner, though somewhat cold and reserved; he possesses a stock of information not inferior to that of any other man. His daughters have been educated in France, where they became acquainted with my family. Fifteen hundred leagues from our native country, in another world, and frequently given up to melancholy, we fancy ourselves restored to existence when we hear our family and our friends mentioned by persons who have known them.