20 ELISHA KENT KANE. 



While connected with this institution, his habits of 

 study were desultory but energetic. Even then he 

 displayed a singular fondness for geographical ad- 

 venture and discovery, which never afterward abated. 

 The University of Virginia was selected as a suit- 

 able institution for the completion of the collegiate 

 studies of Elisha Kane, because the course of in- 

 struction there used was better adapted to improve 

 him in his favorite branches. These were the natural 

 sciences and mathematics. In other departments 

 of study his inattention or his indifference had 

 rendered him deficient; but in the former he ex- 

 celled. During the year and a half which he spent 

 at the Virginia University he became a favorite 

 pupil of Professor B-odgers, who was at that time 

 employed in effecting a geological survey of the 

 Blue Mountains. Young Kane accompanied him 

 in his labors, and displayed the utmost zeal in 

 making geological, mineralogical, and botanical re- 

 searches. At this period he seems to have selected 

 civil engineering as his future profession in life; 

 and he shaped his studies with reference to that 

 ultimate purpose. Already he had acquired an 

 honorable eminence among his fellow-students in 

 the department to which his attention was chiefly 

 directed, and it is probable that he would have com- 

 pleted his mathematical and scientific studies with 



