for Havre, arrived there on the 31st, left it on the 3rd of August, and
arrived at Paris on the 6th. I called immediately on Dr. Franklin, at
Passy, communicated to him our charge, and we wrote to Mr. Adams, then
at the Hague, to join us at Paris.

Before I had left America, that is to say, in the year 1781, 1 had
received a letter from M. de Marbois, of the French legation in
Philadelphia, informing me, he had been instructed by his government to
obtain such statistical accounts of the different states of our Union,
as might be useful for their information; and addressing to me a number
of queries relative to the state of Virginia. I had always made it a
practice, whenever an opportunity occurred of obtaining any information
of our country, which might be of use to me in any station, public or
private, to commit it to writing. These memoranda were on loose papers,
bundled up without order, and difficult of recurrence, when I had
occasion for a particular one. I thought this a good occasion to embody
their substance, which I did in the order of Mr. Marbois' queries, so as
to answer his wish, and to arrange them for my own use. Some friends, to
whom they were occasionally communicated, wished for copies; but their
volume rendering this too laborious by hand, I proposed to get a few
printed for their gratification. I was asked such a price however, as
exceeded the importance of the object. On my arrival at Paris, I found
it could be done for a fourth of what I had been asked here. I therefore
corrected and enlarged them, and had two hundred copies printed, under
the title of 'Notes on Virginia.' I gave a very few copies to some
particular friends in Europe, and sent the rest to my friends in
America. An European copy, by the death of the owner, got into the hands
of a bookseller, who engaged its translation, and when ready for the
press, communicated his intentions and manuscript to me, suggesting
that I should correct it, without asking any other permission for the
publication. I never had seen so wretched an attempt at translation.
Interverted, abridged, mutilated, and often reversing the sense of
the original, I found it a blotch of errors from beginning to end. I
corrected some of the most material, and, in that form, it was printed
in French. A London bookseller, on seeing the translation, requested me
to permit him to print the English original. I thought it best to do
so, to let the world see that it was not really