Dear Sir,

Lord Dunmore returned from the expe- dition againft the Indians, in 1774, he and his officers brought the fpeech of Logan, and re- : 3 1 lated the circumftances conne6led with it. Thefe were i'o affe6ling, and the fpeech itfelf fo fine a morfel of eloquence, that it becanie the theme of every converfation, in Wiliiamfburgh parti- cularly, and generally, indeed, wherefoever any of the officers rcfided or reforted. I learned it in Wiliiamfburgh; I believe at Lord Dunmore 's; and I find in my pocket-book of that year (1774) an entry of the narrative, as taken from the mouth of fome perfon, whofe name, however, is not noted, nor recoUe^ed, pre- cifely in the words ftated in the Notes on Vir- ginia. The fpeech was publifhed in the Vir- ginia Gazette of that time (I have it myfelf in the volume of gazettes of that year ) and though in a ftyle by no means elegant, yet it was fo admired, that it flew through all the public pa- pers of the continent, and through the maga- zines and other periodical publications of Great- Britain ; and thofe who were boys at that day will now atteft, that the fpeech of Logan ufed to be given them as a fchool exercife for repe- tition. It was not till about thirteen or fourteen years after the newfpaper publications, that the Notes on Virginia were publiihed in Ame- rica. Combating, in thefe, the contumelious theory of certain European writers, whofe cele- brity gave currency and weight to their opinions, that our country, from the combined efFec^^s of foil and climate, degenerated animal nature, in the general, and particularly the C 4 D moral faculties of man, 1 confidered the fpeech of Logan as an apt proof of the contrary, and ufed it as fuch ; and 1 copied, verbatim, the n^^rrative I had taken down in 1774, and the fpeech as it had been given us in a better tranf- lation by Lord Dunmcre. I knew nothing of the Crefaps, and could not poilibly have a mo- tive to do them an injury with defign. I repeated what thoufands had done before, on as good authority as we have for moft of the fads we learn through life, and fuch as, to this moment, I have feen no reafon to doubt. That any body queflioned it, was never fufpe6led by mt, till 1 faw the letter of Mr. Martin in the Baltimore paper. I endeavoured then to re-