Five millions of acres have been
sold at private sale, for a dollar an acre, in certificates; and at the
public sales, some of them had sold as high as two dollars and forty
cents the acre. The sales had not been begun two months. By these
means, taxes, &c. our domestic debt, originally twenty-eight millions
of dollars, was reduced, by the 1st day of last October, to twelve
millions, and they were then in treaty-for two millions of acres more,
at a dollar, private sale. Our domestic debt will thus be soon paid off,
and that done, the sales will go on for money, at a cheaper rate, no
doubt, for the payment of our foreign debt. The _petite guerre_, always
waged by the Indians, seems not to abate the ardor of purchase or
emigration. Kentucky is now counted at sixty thousand. Frankland is also
growing fast.
I have been told, that the cutting through the Isthmus of Panama, which
the world has so often wished, and supposed practicable, has at times
been thought of by the government of Spain, and that they once proceeded
so far, as to have a survey and examination made of the ground; but
that the result was, either impracticability or too great difficulty.
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