TH.  JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 18, 1803.

Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: 

I inclose a report of the Secretary of War, stating the trading houses established in the Indian territories, the progress which has been made in the course of the last year in settling and marking boundaries with the different tribes, the purchases of lands recently made from them, and the prospect of further progress in marking boundaries and in new extinguishments of title in the year to come, for which some appropriations of money will be wanting.

To this I have to add that when the Indians ceded to us the salt springs on the Wabash they expressed a hope that we would so employ them as to enable them to procure there the necessary supplies of salt.  Indeed, it would be the most proper and acceptable form in which the annuity could be paid which we propose to give them for the cession.  These springs might at the same time be rendered eminently serviceable to our Western inhabitants by using them as the means of counteracting the monopolies of supplies of salt and of reducing the price in that country to a just level.  For these purposes a small appropriation would be necessary to meet the first expenses, after which they should support themselves and repay those advances.  These springs are said to possess the advantage of being accompanied with a bed of coal.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 19, 1803.

Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: 

I now lay before Congress the annual account of the fund established for defraying the contingent charges of Government.  A single article of $1,440, paid for bringing home 72 seamen discharged in foreign ports from vessels sold abroad, is the only expenditure from that fund, leaving an unexpended balance of $18,560 in the Treasury.

TH.  JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 24. 1803.

Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: 

I transmit a report by the superintendent of the city of Washington on the affairs of the city committed to his care.  By this you will perceive that the resales of lots prescribed by an act of the last session of Congress did not produce a sufficiency to pay the debt to Maryland to which they are appropriated, and as it was evident that the sums necessary for the interest and installments due to that State could not be produced by a sale of the other public lots without an unwarrantable sacrifice of the property, the deficiencies were of necessity drawn from the Treasury of the United States.

The office of the surveyor for the city, created during the former establishment, being of indispensable necessity, it has been continued, and to that of the superintendent, substituted instead of the board of commissioners at the last session of Congress, no salary was annexed by law.  These offices being permanent, I have supposed it more agreeable to principle that their salaries should be fixed by the Legislature, and therefore have assigned them none.  Their services to be compensated are from the 1st day of June last.