our Excellency
of my intention to return to America, before I had taken any step,
which might make it public.

"I have the honor to be, &c.

FRANCIS DANA.

"_St Petersburg, August 8th, 1783._"

As it is probable I shall be in America by the time this letter will
reach you, that is in all November, I shall add nothing here.

I have the honor to be, &c.

FRANCIS DANA.

* * * * *

TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.

St Petersburg, August 17th, 1783.

Sir,

Before I received your letter and the resolution of Congress founded
upon my letter of the 23d of September last, permitting my return to
America, finding it impracticable to support myself upon my
appointment for the time I expected to be detained in negotiating a
treaty of commerce, I had written to Messrs Willink, and other bankers
of the United States in Holland, to give me a credit here, for a sum
not exceeding one thousand pounds sterling on account of the United
States, engaging at the same time to be responsible for it, if
Congress should refuse to allow it. Over and above this, I had applied
to my bankers in this city to advance me six hundred pounds sterling,
on my private credit, which I found it would be necessary for me to
expend for such household furniture only, as is not included in what
they call here a furnished house. Such a one I was just upon the point
of engaging for six months, at the rate of sixteen hundred rubles a
year, when your letter came to hand.

But as the object of negotiation above mentioned, is not thought by
Congress to be worth pursuing at this time, I thought it would be most
advisable for me to disengage myself from these extraordinary
expenses, and to improve the convenient opportunity which now offers
to take my passage from this port for Boston, without waiting for the
conclusion of the definitive treaties of peace, merely to take an
audience of her Imperial Majesty; especially as I doubted whether
Congress would approve of my incurring them, after I had received
their permission to return, and found that they had no particular
object of negotiation in view at this Court. Besides, I saw if I had
an audience of her Majesty, it would not do for me to leave the Court
abruptly, or before the next spring, and that in consequ