Adams Family Correspondence, volume 5
1783-03-12
I suppose you have receiv'd before now my letter from Copenhagen dated Feby. 20th. in which I wrote you that I expected to come from thence to Kiel by water; and that I only waited for a wind: but I have been obliged after all to come by Land, for, after waiting better than a fort night expecting every day to sail, the harbour of Copenhagen froze up, (a thing which happens but very seldom) and there was no appearance of being able to get away by water in less than three weeks or a month. I left Copenhagen on Wednesday the 5th. of this month and arrived here last evening at about 5. o'clock. I expect to stay here some days, so that I shall certainly be in Holland the latter end of this month,2 where I shall wait for your orders, what to do.
JQA's “2”s and “4”s are easily confused, causing JA, in his docketing of this letter and in his letter to AA, 28 March, below, to read “March 14.” The same error appears in JQA, Diary
, 1:174, note 1, under “Martius. 1783.” JQA's statement in his Diary entry at that 105point that he reached Hamburg on 10 March, and his statement in the present letter that he had arrived “last evening,” point to 12 March as the correct date.
JQA did not leave Hamburg until 5 April; he reached Amsterdam on 16 April, and The Hague on 21 April (same, 1:174).