Benjamin Franklin Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-05-02-0023

From Benjamin Franklin to Cadwallader Colden, 25 October 1753

To Cadwallader Colden

ALS: New-York Historical Society

Philada. Oct. 25. 1753

Dear Sir,

This last Summer I have enjoy’d very little of the Pleasure of Reading or Writing. I made a long Journey to the Eastward, which consum’d 10 Weeks; and two Journeys to our Western Frontier:5 One of them to meet and hold a Treaty with the Ohio Indians, in Company with Mr. Peters and Mr. Norris. I shall send you a Copy of the Treaty as soon as ’tis printed. I should be glad to know whether the Act mention’d in your History of the Five Nations, to prevent the People of N York supplying the French with Indian Goods, still subsists and is duly executed.6

I left your Book with Mr. Bowdoin in Boston: I hope you will hear from him this Winter. I observ’d Extracts from it in all the Magazines, and in the Monthly Review.7 But I see no Observations on it.

I send you herewith Monsieur Nollet’s Book.8 M. Dalibard writes me, that he is just about to publish an Answer to it, which perhaps may save me the Trouble.

I hope soon to find time to finish my new Hypothesis of Thunder and Lightning, which I shall immediately communicate to you.9

I sent you per our Friend Bartram, some meteorological Conjectures for your Amusement.1 When perus’d please to return them, as I have no Copy.

With sincere Esteem and Respect, I am, Dear Sir Your most humble Servant

B Franklin

Addressed: To  The honble Cadwalader Colden Esqr  Coldengham  Free  B Franklin

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

5To Lancaster in June (see above, IV, 506), and to Carlisle, where the treaty was held October 1–4. It is printed below (pp. 84–107).

6Colden, The History of the Five Indian Nations (2d edit., London, 1750), pt. 2, preface, pp. iii–iv.

7Monthly Review, VII (1752), 459–67.

8See above, IV, 423.

9See above, pp. 68–79.

1Possibly a copy of the MS printed above, IV, 235. With his son William, John Bartram visited Colden on his trip to the Catskill Mountains, September 1753. Darlington, Memorials, pp. 193, 195.

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