Annotation: 9 June 1801

Dear Sir

      I cannot sufficiently thank you for
your very obliging & friendly Letter of the 23^d
ult^o brought me by M^r Browne. Being
out of the way since, I did not know of
your arrival at Portsmouth until Saturday
too late for Post. At the same time, I
also learnt your unlucky Discovery of
a Sand Bank in Hythe Bay, where I
have often been at Anchor without any
Suspicion of Danger. – (But one of our East
Indiamen was lost by knocking a hole in
her bottom on a sharp Rock at [illegible]
of False Bay, an strait which every body
had before paƒsed in, without suspicion)
I conceive, however, that no Survey has
ever been made of that part, & you may
find by what I have said in Herodotus
[ends here – signature on the other side has been cut away]