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23.7.98
Mr. Dickson,
I am sorry to inform you that it is not in my power at the present to pay you what I owe you. I receiv'd a letter on Saturday night from Sir Joseph Banks. I find by the contents, that I have little hopes of going to Botany Bay. I wish I had known as much before I left London; for the very day before, Mr. Hove called at Mr. Curtis's garden: Mr. Underwood told me that he wanted a person to take into Tartarz with him; I make no doubt but what I could have made an agreement with him.
Through the expectation of going to Bot. Bay, I have been in no regular employment, by not knowing how soon I might be called from it; but, I often times told you that I thought the Bot. Bay affairs would fall short, but you always strove to evince me that it was substantial. I do assure you, if it does prove abortive it will injure me very much. If I had not known about it, then I could not have put myself in expectation. Mr Underwood very well knows, that I would have returned home if nothing else had fallen out. As the circumstance has happened, there is one thing that I am glad of, that is not being in London.
By the manner of Sir Joseph's writing, he imagines that I am not well enough skilled in plants for a Botanical traveller, by not stopping longer in the gardens I have not had sufficient experience; but I have much bold to tell him, that I will engage two of the best men that ever Kew gardens produced. In Kew they have both exotic and british plants, but they have a larger collection of exotics than british, the latter being smaller in number, they must certainly be learn'd the sooner; take a Kewian out of the garden, even
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