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198 disposition, her affectionate remembrances of her friends, her devoted attentions to her husband, and his sense of her admirable qualities, and of his own irreparable loss; concluding by saying, is it too much, under such circumstances as these, to ask her friends to forbear from publishing their premature speculations regarding her fate, as they could only give pain and excite prejudice, without in any way facilitating the objects of inquiry.

"Every rumour was then sifted, letters and depositions were compared; every inquiry was instituted among those long familiar with the coast; and all that threw light on the circumstances, and appeared to have fact for its foundation, was submitted judicially to the Colonial Office, and investigation solicited and accorded.

"In July, 1839, Captain Castle, of the 'Pylades,' who had been for some time off the coast, and who had seen my sister the day before her death in health and spirits, called upon us and gave all the information in his power, and whatever he said was most satisfactory to us as far as it went.

"On the 2d of August, 1839, I received, through Mr. Maclean's brother, a communication of thirty- one folio pages. It appears, from information which I received in November last, that a previous communication, of considerable length, had been addressed to me from Cape Coast, by Mr. Maclean, so early as February, 1839. This, however, never reached my hands, but I have received an explanation from Mr. Maclean's agent, that the non-delivery of it was attributable to a mistake.

"The document which I did receive was said to be 'written exclusively for my information, and to be considered private, at least for the present.' I made an offer to Mr. Maclean's family to append