laid his crown at the feet of the king, when the chiefs laid also their four scalps to show their superiority over their enemies, and five eagle tails as emblems of victory. The proceedings of the chiefs while in England excited great interest. Shortly before they returned to their country, an "Agreement of Peace and Friendship", was signed with them on 29 September, in the name of the British nation, and with the approval of the Board of Trade: the Cherokees recognized Britain as a sole trading nation, in return for supplies of guns and gunpowder. This agreement was probably the means of keeping the Cherokees as firm allies of Britain in subsequent wars. By this time some reports seriously affecting Cuming's character had reached England. In a letter from South Carolina, bearing the date 12 June 1730, an extract from which is given in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal for 16 September, he is directly accused of having defrauded the settlers of large sums of money and other property by means of fictitious promissory notes. He does not seem to have made any answer to these charges, which, if true, would explain his subsequent ill-success and poverty. The government turned a deaf ear to all his proposals, which included schemes for paying off eighty millions of the national debt by settling three million Jewish families in the Cherokee mountains to cultivate the land, and for relieving Britain's American colonies from taxation by establishing numerous banks and a local currency. Imprisonment Being now deeply in debt, Cuming turned to alchemy, and attempted experiments on the transmutation of metals. In 1737 he was confined within the limits of the Fleet Prison, but having a rule of court. He remained there until 1765, when, on 30 December of that year, he was nominated a poor brother of the London Charterhouse by Archbishop Secker, and took up residence in the hospital on 3 January 1766. He died there nearly ten years afterwards, and was buried in the church of East Barnet on 28 August 1775. He had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1720, but, neglecting to pay the annual fee, was expelled in 1757. Family Cuming married Amy, daughter of Lancelot Whitehall, a member of an old Shropshire family, and a commissioner in the customs for Scotland. They had a son, Alexander, born about 1737, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who