The intervention of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville was solicited, and a letter was obtained by him from Benjamin Franklin--then American minister at the Court of Versailles--to his son-in-law, Richard Bache.

Lady Juliana Penn wrote in their behalf to John Penn at Philadelphia, and Mademoiselle Pictet to Colonel Kinloch, member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina.
Thus supported in their undertaking the youthful travelers sailed from L'Orient on May 27, in an American vessel, the Kattie, Captain Loring.
Of the sum which Gallatin, who supplied the capital for the expedition, brought from Geneva, one half had been expended in their land journey and the payment of the passages to Boston; one half, eighty louis d'or--the equivalent of four hundred silver dollars--remained, part of which they invested in tea.

Reaching the American coast in a fog, or bad weather, they were landed at Cape Ann on July 14.

From Gloucester they rode the next day to Boston on horseback, a distance of thirty miles.
Here they put up at a French cafe, "The Sign of the Alliance," in Fore Street, kept by one Tahon, and began to consider what step they should next take in the new world.
The prospects were not encouraging; the military fortunes of the struggling nation were never at a lower ebb than during the summer which intervened between the disaster of Camden and the discovery of Arnold's treason.

Washington's army lay at New Windsor in enforced inactivity; enlistments were few, and the currency was almost worthless.