necessary for us, to
pave the way to arrangements with them, by a previous application to the
Ottoman Porte. Your Excellency's intimate acquaintance with this subject
would render your advice to us equally valuable and desirable. If you
would be pleased to permit me to wait on you, any day or hour which
shall be most convenient to yourself, I should be much gratified by a
little conversation with you on this subject.

I have the honor to be, with great respect, your Excellency's most
obedient

and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER VII.--TO JOHN PAGE, May 4, 1786

TO JOHN PAGE.

Paris, May 4, 1786.

Dear Sir,

Your two favors of March the 15th and August the 23, 1785, by Monsieur
de la Croix, came to hand on the 15th of November. His return gives me
an opportunity of sending you a copy of the Nautical Almanacs for 1786,
7, 8, 9. There is no late and interesting publication here, or I would
send it by the same conveyance. With these almanacs, I pack a copy of
some Notes I wrote for Monsieur de Marbois, in the year 1781, of which I
had a few printed here. They were written in haste, and for his private
inspection. A few friends having asked copies, I found it cheaper to
print than to write them. They will offer nothing new to you, not even
as an oblation of my friendship for you, which is as old almost as we
are ourselves. Mazzei brought me your favor of April the 27th. I thank
you much for your communications. Nothing can be more grateful at such
a distance. It is unfortunate, that most people think the occurrences
passing daily under their eyes, are either known to all the world, or
not worth being known. They therefore do not give them place in their
letters. I hope you will be so good as to continue your friendly
information. The proceedings of our public bodies, the progress of the
public mind on interesting questions, the casualties which happen among
our private friends, and whatever is interesting to yourself and family,
will always be anxiously received by me. There is one circumstance in
the work you were concerned in, which has not yet come to my knowledge;
to wit, How far westward from Fort Pitt, does the western boundary of
Pennsylvania pass, and where does it strike the Ohio? The proposition
you mention from Mr. Anderson, on the purchase of tobacco, I would have
made use of, but that I have engaged the abuses of the tobacco trade on
a more general scale. I confess their redress