Letter 2383

Burnet delivered the message to Geoffroy, as Sloane had requested. He complains that Paris is ‘so crowded and every thing so extravagantly dear’ that he had to go to Orleans, where he stayed for several weeks. He plans on traveling through Flanders and Holland so long as it remains peaceful. Burnet heard that if Britain does not give up ‘Gibraltar and Portmahon’ there will be war with France and that ‘the India Compy’ is to have as ‘good terms with Spain in relation to trade as any other Nation whatsoever’. He informs Sloane of a ‘strange acct from the Czar of Muscovy’, which was presented to the Academie des sciences. A man was bitten by a dog and died, only for his wife to give birth to ‘five puppies’ nine weeks later. John Burnet worked for the South Sea Company in the West Indies and later served as the Physician to King Philip V of Spain.