ericans, which were nearly all taken up,
and one hundred were sent to Geneva, Switzerland, to D'Yvernois and his
friends. The project was to purchase land, and Mr. Gallatin had decided
upon a location in the northeast part of Pennsylvania, or in New York,
on the border. In the summer Gallatin made a journey through New York to
examine lands with the idea of occupation. In July, 1795, he made a
settlement with Mr. Morris, taking his notes for three thousand five
hundred dollars. Balancing his accounts, Mr. Gallatin then found himself
worth seven thousand dollars, in addition to which he had about
twenty-five thousand acres of waste lands and the notes of Mr. Morris.
In 1798 Mr. Morris failed, and, under the harsh operations of the old
law, was sent to jail. Mr. Gallatin never recovered the three thousand
dollars owed to him in the final balance of his real estate operations.

After Mr. Gallatin left the Treasury he located patents for seventeen
hundred acres of Virginia military lands in the State of Ohio, on
warrants purchased in 1784. In 1815 he valued his entire estate,
exclusive of his farm on the Monongahela, at less than twelve thousand
dollars. Forty years later he complained of his investment as a
troublesome and unproductive property, which had plagued him all his
life. Besides the purchase of lands, Mr. Gallatin invested part of his
little capital in building houses on his farm, and in the country store
which Badollet managed. The one yielded no return, and the sum put in
the other was lost through the incompetency of his honest but
inexperienced friend. His wife brought him a small property, but at no
time in his life was he possessed of more than a modest competency. But
he had never any discontent with his fortune nor any desire to be rich.

Mrs. Gallatin, who had always until her marriage lived in cities, was
entirely unfit for frontier life. In these days of railroads it is not
easy to measure the isolation of their country home. Pittsburgh was
nearly five days' journey from Philadelphia, and the crossing of the
Alleghanies took a day and a half more. Before his marriage Mr. Gallatin
had seen very little of society. Though in early manhood he felt no
embarrassment among men, he said 'that he never yet was able to divest
himself of an anti-Chesterfieldian awkwardness in mixed companies.' He
did not take advantage of his residence in Philadelphia to accustom
himself to the ways of the world. There he lived i