AI>PEND1X. 



253 



which they sailed for England had arrived there in safety, 

 I therefore presumed, until I saw Captain Henley, that 

 they must have been lost on the voyage, between England 

 and the United States, and that their friends knew all that 

 eould be known or desired to be known, of their misfortune. 



As they carried with them bills drawn by them on the 

 Secretary of the navy, and endorsed by me for the express 

 purpose of paying their passage, and copies of letters, such 

 as these now enclosed to you, numbered 1, 2, 3, the last of 

 which represents a special letter of advice to the Secretary of 

 state, intended to accompany the bills ; it becomes difficult 

 to account for the vessel's arriving without them, and for 

 their not being heard of in any way by the Secretary of the 

 navy, or Secretary of state. You will perceive that if they 

 arrived in England in the vessel in which they sailed, it was 

 necessary for them to sell the bills there, which these letters 

 refer to, to pay their passage that far ; or otherwise, that 

 they should have been furnished by our agent for prisoners 

 there, with other means of doing so, and of going home, 

 which would have brought their names in his accounts, and 

 their arrival in, and their departure from, England, would 

 have come to the knowledge of oar government in one of 

 these ways. On the other hand, as they left me without 

 any other means of paying the Swedish captain tlsan those 

 to be derived from the sale of those bills in England, it was 

 natural to presume, if they found an opportunity by leaving 

 him, at sea, of getting home sooner, or of re-entering the 

 service more expeditiously, which was the worthy motive 

 of their impatience to depart from hence, and which was 

 provided for in the paper, (No. 5,) that they would still 

 have been obliged to transfer the bills to him for the same 

 reason : and on this supposition the bills ought equally to 

 have reached the Treasury soon after the arrival of the ves- 

 sel in England, and the date of the transfer, or some other 

 circumstance attending it, would probably have indicated 

 how far they went in the Swedish vessel. But at all events, 

 whatever became of the bills, as she reached England in 

 safety, and her Captain is still there, according to the Me- 

 morandum, (No. 4.) he certainly must be able to give 

 some account of them. The first question for him to an- 

 swer is, if they did not reach England in his vessel, what 

 did he do with them ? The next is, if he was not paid 

 from these bills, how was he paid ? 



I can see no way of resolving them, except by supposinc; 



