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To Dr. [Joshua] Cohen, Baltimore, by the Brig Mentor: “…The people here cannot comprehend that prosperity is dependent on education and instead of going on, they are retrograding, it is owed in part to European intrigues, we are now by our political situation too much exposed to [rascalous?] influence…. I sent… two small boxes with minerals, one for you and another for the Academy…offer that last in my name and accepting the other for you as a token of my gratitude to your kindness, send me word upon my classifications and upon the merit of the contents. I must remember you to read the labels before you open the packages, the Diamond and Christalline Gold are so small pieces that they can be lost…” With Cohen’s nearly-illegible note at bottom: “Replied…thanks for Academy and self. Label marked Corallines ought to be Quarz Agate. Green Topaz are new. Are you sure that they belong to Topaz…I hope he may be able to obtain some [purple ?] Feeling much interested in crystallization of it…” In 1824, two years after Brazil declared its independence from Portugal, Brazil’s first envoy to the United States arrived at Baltimore. During his five years in America, Jose Silvestre Rebello was warmly welcomed by some of the great men of Washington –Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Jackson - but also by Baltimore citizens like Dr. Joshua I. Cohen, pillar of the amateur scientific society soon to be incorporated as the Maryland Academy of Sciences. Cohen, one of the first Jews elected to public office in Maryland, had wide-ranging interests as a wealthy collector, from autograph letters of the Founding Fathers and early American paper money to gems and minerals. It was thanks to his continuing friendship with Rebello that the Baltimore Academy acquired the rare mineral samples described in this letter.