The following little treatise, was written in the autumn of the year eighteen hundred and twenty-four; when from the urgency of my common avocation, and from a desire to remain incognito, the manuscript was placed in the hands of a friend of Captain Symmes for publication. As it was not my intention to seek a publisher, or make advances to facilitate its progress, I left the country for a considerable length of time, without paying any further attention to the subject. Various difficulties intervening, delayed the publication, until subsequent events, have destroyed my chief inducement; which was, that these speculations, compiled from a cursory examination of facts, should go forth as a harbinger, merely, and not "follow in the wake," of public investigation.

March, 1826.