8 ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYOR— DAVENPORT lyiEy " ,m \v Txxi; 



slopes of the Orange Mountains I soon knew every pond and brook, field and forest within 

 five miles of my father's house." Mayor writes further: "Often loneliness has oppressed me 

 in the streets of great cities, but never once upon the sea or in the deep primeval forest, not 

 even when as a boy of thirteen I was lost for a couple of days in the wilds of Maine. I felt 

 angry at the trees that obscured the view but never once lonely in their lordly presence." 

 (A. G. M. Mss.) Nomadism is generally a sex-linked trait, found in men and apt to be also 

 in one or more of their mother's male relatives. His mother's brother, Dr. Charles Worthing- 

 ton Goldsborough, married early and had a large family; according to his sister he was "crazy 

 to go to California," had a strong desire to travel, but was tied down by his family of 7 children. 

 These two cases of strong love of travel in mother's brother and nephew are related, as ex- 

 pected, on the assumption that the nomadism was constitutional. However, in the Mayor 

 line are many with an extreme fondness for travel, as Branz Mayer (1878, p. 63) points out. 



But in addition to nomadism, Mayor had clearly the trait of thalassophilia; and evidently 

 such a trait should be found in other members of the family on both paternal and maternal 

 sides. On the paternal side such thalassophilia was probably present in Christian Mayer; 

 his father's father's grandfather — a leading East Indian shipowner and merchant of Baltimore, 

 and probably, like most merchants of his day, a voyageur. He organized a marine insurance 

 company. Christian's son Lewis went to India at 8 years (in 1801) ; was sent as supercargo to 

 Europe at 16 years. Lewis's son, Charles F. Mayer (grandfather of Alfred G. M.) made a 

 voyage to Cape Horn, Valparaiso, and Lima in 1848-1850, and he traveled extensively in the 

 United States and Europe. C. F. Mayer married Eliza C. Blackwell, daughter of Capt. F. 

 Blackwell, a commander in the merchant service. One of their sons (Alfred G. M.'s uncle) 

 was a civil engineer in Brazil, a regular officer of the Engineer Corps, United States Army 

 (1859-1867), who served with special merit under Farragut in the capture of New Orleans. 



On the mother's side is Charles Goldsborough of the Confederate Navy, a third cousin of 

 Alfred's mother; also Admiral L. M. Goldsborough, who during the Civil War destroyed the 

 Confederate batteries on Roanoke Island. Thus it is probable that the early trips made by 

 Alfred with Alexander Agassiz awoke an innate love of the sea that determined his career. 



Social gifts. — Mayor had social gifts of a high order; among them were companionableness, 

 a love of conversation, a marked sense of humor, and a capacity for administration. His 

 companionableness is testified to by all who traveled with him or worked at the Tortugas lab- 

 oratory. Thus Dr. Davenport Hooker writes about life at Tortugas: 



"At 6 p. m., after supper, he walked with us along the path to the lighthouse, then to the eastern shore 

 of the island and along the shore to the southwestern tip of the island. Here each one burrowed a comfortable 

 hole in the sand, stretched out and gossiped about books, research people, and things in general, while the . 

 sun went down in gorgeous splendor. 



At this time, as Prof. E. N. Harvey recalls, they would "listen to Mayor's stories of the 

 chiefs of Fiji, the mutiny of the Bounty, or the narrow policies of the missionaries. Doctor 

 Mayor was one of the most delightful talkers, with an interest in every field under the sun." 

 In his conversational qualities Mayor was like his father, who was "a versatile conversationalist 

 and charming story-teller" (Mayer and Woodward, p. 256). In his love of the bizarre and 

 harmlessly shocking in his stories (like the preferences of cannibals for the flesh of different 

 human races) Doctor Mayor reminded one of his kinsman Edgar Allen Poe — the second cousin 

 of his mother's mother, Amelia Poe, the daughter of Jacob Poe, of Frederick, Md. 



Mayor was an excellent administrator. His laboratory at Tortugas and his expeditions 

 to remote seas were planned and conducted in admirable fashion. On the long trips all con- 

 tingencies were foreseen. At his laboratory menu cards were prepared for a 10-day period so 

 as to provide an adequate rotation of meals. The volumes of reports from his laboratory are 

 evidence of this marked administrative ability. 



He had high ideals as to the requirements of courtesy both toward his guests on shore 

 or on the marine equipment; and toward the representative of the Government in the out-of- 

 the-way places that he visited. He always first visited the commandant or chief man of the 

 place where he had occasion to stop. He was punctilious in marine etiquette, deeming it essen- 



