orms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object, only the traits which favor that
theory. But it is too early to form theories on those antiquities.
We must wait with patience till more facts are collected. I wish your
Philosophical Society would collect exact descriptions of the several
monuments as yet known, and insert them naked in their Transactions, and
continue their attention to those hereafter to be discovered. Patience
and observation may enable us, in time, to solve the problem, whether
those who formed the scattering monuments in our western country, were
colonies sent off from Mexico or the founders of Mexico itself; whether
both were the descendants or the progenitors of the Asiatic red men.
The Mexican tradition, mentioned by Dr. Robertson, is an evidence, but
a feeble one, in favor of the one opinion. The number of languages
radically different, is a strong evidence in favor of the contrary one.
There is an American by the name of Ledyard, he who was with Captain
Cook on his last voyage, and wrote an account of that voyage, who has
gone to St. Petersburg; from thence he was to go to Kamtschatka; to
cross over thence to the northwest coast of America, and to penetrate
through the main continent, to our side of it. He is a person of
ingenuity and information. Unfortunately, he has too much imagination.
However, if he escapes safely, he will give us new, curious, and useful
information. I had a letter from him, dated last March, when he was
about to leave St. Petersburg on his way to Kamtschatka.

With respect to the inclination of the strata of rocks, I had observed
them between the Blue Ridge and North Mountains in Virginia, to be
parallel with the pole of the earth. I observed the same thing in most
instances in the Alps, between Cette and Turin: but in returning along
the precipices of the Apennines, where they hang over the Mediterranean,
their direction was totally different and various: and you mention, that
in our western country, they are horizontal. This variety proves they
have not been formed by subsidence, as some writers of theories of the
earth have pretended; for then they should always have been in circular
strata, and concentric. It proves, too, that they have not been formed
by the rotation of the earth on its axis, as might have been suspected,
had all these strata been parallel with that axis. They may, indeed,
have been thrown up by explosions, as Whitehurst supposes, or have been