of money will be wanting.

To this I have to add that when the Indians ceded to us the salt springs
on the Wabash they expressed a hope that we would so employ them as to
enable them to procure there the necessary supplies of salt. Indeed, it
would be the most proper and acceptable form in which the annuity could
be paid which we propose to give them for the cession. These springs
might at the same time be rendered eminently serviceable to our Western
inhabitants by using them as the means of counteracting the monopolies
of supplies of salt and of reducing the price in that country to a just
level. For these purposes a small appropriation would be necessary to
meet the first expenses, after which they should support themselves and
repay those advances. These springs are said to possess the advantage of
being accompanied with a bed of coal.

TH. JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 19, 1803.

_Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:

I now lay before Congress the annual account of the fund established
for defraying the contingent charges of Government. A single article of
$1,440, paid for bringing home 72 seamen discharged in foreign ports
from vessels sold abroad, is the only expenditure from that fund,
leaving an unexpended balance of $18,560 in the Treasury.

TH. JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 24. 1803.

_Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives_:

I transmit a report by the superintendent of the city of Washington on
the affairs of the city committed to his care. By this you will perceive
that the resales of lots prescribed by an act of the last session of
Congress did not produce a sufficiency to pay the debt to Maryland
to which they are appropriated, and as it was evident that the sums
necessary for the interest and installments due to that State could not
be produced by a sale of the other public lots without an unwarrantable
sacrifice of the property, the deficiencies were of necessity drawn from
the Treasury of the United States.

The office of the surveyor for the city, created during the former
establishment, being of indispensable necessity, it has been continued,
and to that of the superintendent, substituted instead of the board of
commissioners at the last session of Congress, no salary was annexed by
law. These offices being permanent, I have supposed it more agreeable to
principle that their salaries should be fixed by the Legislature, and
therefore have assigned them no