Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/336

322 enquire into it as accurately as the teſtimony remaining, after a lapſe of twenty odd years, would permit, and that the reſult ſhould be made known, either in the firſt new edition which ſhould be printed of the Notes on Virginia, or by publiſhing an appendix. I thought that ſo far as that work had contributed to impeach the memory of Creſap, by handing on an erroneous charge, it was proper it ſhould be made the vehicle of retribution. Not that I was at all the author of the injury. I had only concurred, with thouſands and thouſands of others, in believing a tranſaction on authority which merited reſpect. For the ſtory of Logan is only repeated in the Notes on Virginia, preciſely as it had been current for more than a dozen years before they were publiſhed. When Lord Dunmore returned from the expedition againſt the Indians, in 1774, he and his officers brought the ſpeech of Logan, and related the circumſtances connected with it. Theſe were ſo affecting, and the ſpeech itſelf is ſo fine a morſel of eloquence, that it became the theme of every converſation, in Williamſburgh particularly, and generally, indeed, whereſoever any of the officers reſided or reſorted. I learned it in Williamſburgh; I believe at Lord Dunmore's; and I find in my pocket-book of that year (1774) an entry of the narrative, as taken from the mouth of ſome perſon, whoſe name, however, is not noted, nor recollected, preciſely in the words ſtated in the Notes on Virginia. The ſpeech was publiſhed in the Virginia Gazette of that time (I have it myſelf in the volume of gazettes of that year) and though in a ſtyle by no means elegant, yet it was