LETTER LXIII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, July 1, 1787
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Paris, July 1, 1787.
Dear Sir,
I returned about three weeks ago from a very useless voyage; useless,
I mean, as to the object which first suggested it, that of trying the
effect of the mineral waters of Aix, in Provence, on my hand. I
tried these, because recommended among six or eight others as equally
beneficial, and because they would place me at the beginning of a tour
to the seaports of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, and L'Orient, which I
had long meditated, in hopes that a knowledge of the places and persons
concerned in our commerce, and the information to be got from them,
might enable me sometimes to be useful. I had expected to satisfy myself
at Marseilles, of the causes of the difference of quality between the
rice of Carolina, and that of Piedmont, which is brought in quantities
to Marseilles. Not being able to do it, I made an excursion of three
weeks into the rice country beyond the Alps, going through it from
Vercelli to Pavia, about sixty miles. I found the difference to be, not
in the management, as had been supposed both here and in Carolina, but
in the species of rice; and I hope to enable them in Carolina, to begin
the cultivation of the Piedmont rice, and carry it on, hand in hand,
with their own, that they may supply both qualities which is absolutely
necessary at this market.
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