ce; the value
whereof shall be paid by the other party, on a mutual adjustment of
accounts for the subsistence of prisoners, at the close of the war:
and the said accounts shall not be mingled with, or set off against any
others, nor the balances due on them, be withheld as a satisfaction
or reprisal for any other article, or for any other cause, real
or pretended, whatever. That each party shall be allowed to keep a
commissary of prisoners, of their own appointment, with every separate
cantonment of prisoners in possession of the other, which commissary
shall see the prisoners as often as he pleases, shall be allowed to
receive and distribute whatever comforts may be sent to them by their
friends, and shall be free to make his reports, in open letters, to
those who employ him. But if any officer shall break his parole, or any
other prisoner shall escape from the limits of his cantonment, after
they shall have been designated to him, such individual officer, or
other prisoner, shall forfeit so much of the benefit of this article,
as provides for his enlargement on parole or cantonment. And it is
declared, that neither the pretence that war dissolves all treaties, nor
any other whatever, shall be considered as annulling or suspending this,
or the next preceding article, but, on the contrary, that the state of
war is precisely that for which they are provided, and during which,
they are to be as sacredly observed, as the most acknowledged articles
in the law of nature and nations.

LETTER CLII.--TO MR. RITTENHOUSE, January 25,1786

TO MR. RITTENHOUSE.

Paris, January 25,1786.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of September the 28th came to hand a few days ago. I thank
you for the details on the subject of the southern and western lines.
There remains thereon, one article, however, which I will still beg
you to inform me of; viz. how far is the western boundary beyond the
meridian of Pittsburg? This information is necessary, to enable me to
trace that boundary in my map. I shall be much gratified, also, with
a communication of your observations on the curiosities of the western
country. It will not be difficult to induce me to give up the theory of
the growth of shells, without their being the nidus of animals. It is
only an idea, and not an opinion with me. In the Notes, with which I
troubled you, I had observed that there were three opinions as to the
origin of these shells. 1. That they have been deposited even in the