AFTER the preceding sheets had gone to press, I was favored by Sir Charles Warre Malet with some communications, relating principally to the peace announced in the foregoing dispatch. These, though received too late to be applied, in the proper places, to the elucidation of those parts of the Sultan’s correspondence which they would have served to explain or illustrate, appeared to me of too much value to be altogether suppressed. I considered that the diligent reader might still, if he pleased, convert them to the use just adverted to; and that they would, at least, form a record, of which the future historian of the period in question might avail himself. I have, for these reasons, thought it proper, with the permission of Sir Charles Malet, to insert them in this place.

The documents, here spoken of, consist of translations of five curious letters from Tippoo Sultan to Budrûz Zumân Khân, and of an extract from the private journal of the Resident, commencing the 20th Decem­ber 1786, about which time the Sultan appears to have made some overtures of peace to his adversaries, which were rejected by the latter; but of which no trace is discernible, either in the correspondence or the memoirs. Indeed, it is clearly shown by the journal, that the mission of Budrûz Zumân Khân to the Mahrattah camp, mentioned in Letter CCCCXXX, must have been the second on which that officer was employed, although of his former fruitless embassy no notice is any where taken

Of the five letters to Budrûz Zumân Khân,* mentioned above, I have given only one (which, in the order of time, immediately follows Letter CCCCXXX); the others, though not less interesting, belonging to a much later period than that embraced by the present publication. There being no reason to doubt the authenticity of the letter in question (which, on the contrary, is strongly confirmed by its conformity, in point both of matter and manner, with other productions of the Sultan’s pen), I can no otherwise account for its not appearing in my collection, than by sup­posing that it may have been deemed by the writer of too delicate (or rather indelicate) a nature, to be entered in the usual registry of his correspondence. It must, at the same time, be allowed, that many things are preserved in that record, of which the Sultan had still greater cause to be ashamed.