Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LXXXIII.—­TO DOCTOR BARTON, September 21, 1809

TO DOCTOR BARTON.

Monticello, September 21, 1809.

Dear Sir,

I received last night your favor of the 14th, and would with all possible pleasure have communicated to you any part or the whole of the Indian vocabularies which I had collected, but an irreparable misfortune has deprived me of them.  I have now been thirty years availing myself of every possible opportunity of procuring Indian vocabularies to the same set of words:  my opportunities were probably better than will ever occur again to any person having the same desire.  I had collected about fifty, and had digested most of them in collateral columns, and meant to have printed them the last year of my stay in Washington.  But not having yet digested Captain Lewis’s collection, nor having leisure then to do it, I put it off till I should return home.  The whole, as well digest as originals, were packed in a trunk of stationery, and sent round by water with about thirty other packages of my effects, from Washington, and while ascending James river, this package, on account of its weight and presumed precious contents, was singled out and stolen.  The thief, being disappointed on opening it, threw into the river all its contents, of which he thought he could make no use.  Among these were the whole of the vocabularies.  Some leaves floated ashore, and were found in the mud; but these were very few, and so defaced by the mud and water, that no general use can ever be made of them.  On the receipt of your letter I turned to them, and was very happy to find, that the only morsel of an original vocabulary among them, was Captain Lewis’s of the Pani language, of which you say you have not one word.  I therefore enclose it to you as it is, and a little fragment of some other, which I see is in his hand-writing, but no indication remains on it of what language it is.  It is a specimen of the condition of the little which was recovered.  I am the more concerned at this accident, as of the two hundred and fifty words of my vocabularies, and the one hundred and thirty words of the great Russian vocabularies of the languages of the other quarters of the globe, seventy-three were common to both, and would have furnished materials for a comparison, from which something might have resulted.  Although I believe no general use can ever be made of the wrecks of my loss, yet I will ask the return of the Pani vocabulary when you are done with it.  Perhaps I may make another attempt to collect, although I am too old to expect to make much progress in it.

I learn, with pleasure, your acquisition of the pamphlet on the astronomy of the ancient Mexicans.  If it be ancient and genuine, or modern and rational, it will be of real value.  It is one of the most interesting countries of our hemisphere, and merits every attention.