The Enquirer

A literary gentleman lately arrived in this city from England furnishes us with the following information. On the sixteenth day of June, 1796, one hundred young scientific gentlemen, who had then just finished their education in the Colleges of England and Scotland, met by appointment at Yarmouth, where they resolved, under the strictest injunction of secrecy, "that each of them should, in order to obtain correct information of the world, and of the customs, manners and dispositions of mankind, quit their Island and reside for ten years successively in different foreign countries particularly specified; and that they should on the first day of September, 1807, again meet together in London for the purpose of reading over their different journals and of preparing the same for publication."

This strange resolution was actually put in practice and on the first of January, 1807, it was known to some scientific men in London, that 13 of the young adventurers had died and that the remaining eighty-seven would certainly meet next summer according to agreement. It was said that one of these adventurers had constantly resided in the city of New-York, where he had collected a most valuable mass of information.