forgotten in the hands in which you placed them, was probably owing to much business, and more important.  I have desired Mr. Madison to refund to you the money, you were so kind as to advance for me.  The delay of your letter will apologize for this delay of the repayment.  I thank you also, for the extract of the letter you were so kind as to communicate to me, on the antiquities found in the western country.  I wish that the persons who go thither, would make very exact descriptions of what they see of that kind, without forming any theories.  The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object, only the traits which favor that theory.  But it is too early to form theories on those antiquities.  We must wait with patience till more facts are collected.  I wish your Philosophical Society would collect exact descriptions of the several monuments as yet known, and insert them naked in their Transactions, and continue their attention to those hereafter to be discovered.  Patience and observation may enable us, in time, to solve the problem, whether those who formed the scattering monuments in our western country, were colonies sent off from Mexico or the founders of Mexico itself; whether both were the descendants or the progenitors of the Asiatic red men.  The Mexican tradition, mentioned by Dr. Robertson, is an evidence, but a feeble one, in favor of the one opinion.  The number of languages radically different, is a strong evidence in favor of the contrary one.  There is an American by the name of Ledyard, he who was with Captain Cook on his last voyage, and wrote an account of that voyage, who has gone to St. Petersburg; from thence he was to go to Kamtschatka; to cross over thence to the northwest coast of America, and to penetrate through the main continent, to our side of it.  He is a person of ingenuity and information.  Unfortunately, he has too much imagination.  However, if he escapes safely, he will give us new, curious, and useful information.  I had a letter from him, dated last March, when he was about to leave St. Petersburg on his way to Kamtschatka.

With respect to the inclination of the strata of rocks, I had observed them between the Blue Ridge and North Mountains in Virginia, to be parallel with the pole of the earth.  I observed the same thing in most instances in the Alps, between Cette and Turin:  but in returning along the precipices of the Apennines, where they hang over the Mediterranean, their direction was totally different and various:  and you mention, that in our western country, they are horizontal.  This variety proves they have not been formed by subsidence, as some writers of theories of the earth have pretended; for then they should always have been in circular strata, and concentric.  It proves, too, that they have not been formed by the rotation of the earth on its axis, as might have been suspected, had all these strata been parallel with that axis.  They may, indeed, have been thrown up by explosions, as