SMITHSONIAN BEQUEST. 101 



New York with the Smithsonian bequest in gold. With regard to 

 the disposition to be made by you of these funds, you no doubt will 

 have learned upon landing that your request had been anticipated by 

 instructions to you from the Treasury Department, intrusted to the 

 care of Mr. George Newbold, president of the Bank of America. 



Tendering to you my congratulations on the success of your mission, 

 and on your safe return to your country, I am, sir, respectfully, your 

 obedient servant, 



JOHN FORSYTH. 



RICHARD RUSH, Esq., JVew York. 



Richard Rush to John Forsyth. 



PHILADELPHIA, September 4, 1838. 



SIR: I was yesterday honored with your letter of the 30th of August, 

 acknowledging my No. 30 from the harbor of New York, and tender 

 my thanks for your kind congratulations on my return to my own 

 country and on the success of the public business confided to me. 

 Your letter went on to New York, as directed, but was returned, and 

 I received it at my home near the city. 



My No. 31, written after I had landed, will have informed you that 

 I had then received the instructions of the Secretary of the Treasury 

 to which your letter refers, and I have since been in correspondence 

 with him. Owing to the delay in getting the ship into the dock, I was 

 not able to leave New York with the gold until the first of this month, 

 when I arrived with it, accompanied by two agents from the Bank of 

 America, that institution having, at the request of the Secretary of the 

 Treasury, obligingly afforded me every facility in its power towards 

 the business I had in hand. I did not, however, feel at liberty to 

 withdraw my own personal superintendence from the operation of 

 transferring the gold until I saw it deposited at the mint. Thither I 

 immediately had it conveyed on reaching this city on the 1st instant, 

 the director and treasurer of the mint having been in readiness to 

 receive it under the previous information of its intended transfer, 

 which I had requested the bank to transmit. The entire sum contained 

 in the eleven boxes which I delivered to those two officers of the mint 

 on Saturday was 104,960 8s. 6d. the whole in English sovereigns, 

 except the change; and I have now the satisfaction of informing you 

 that official receipts of this amount from my hands have been for- 

 warded to the Treasury Department. 



The excess of this sum over that which I had computed in my No. 

 30 as the probable amount to be left in my hands, arises from the 

 president of the bank having undertaken, at my suggestion, to pay the 

 freight and other shipping charges due at New York; the bank to be 



