1895.] ^t)7 [Frazer. 



urall}^ receptive, and who was gifted with an unusual power of imita- 

 tion. The graceful use of the limbs in gesticulation, the peculiar and diffi- 

 cult art of intoning and pronouncing languages after the manner of 

 those who were born to their use, must have been learned by him at this 

 time. This aptitude he retained to the last day of his life. It lent a 

 greatly increased spirit and interest to the most commonplace recitals. If 

 he desired to express the act of putting a coin or a heavy object on a 

 table, his motions and gestures were as natural as those of the best of 

 prestidigitateurs. You could almost see the coin — you could almost 

 swear that he was straining his muscles in lifting a heavy object, though 

 these were entirely invisible to you. These gifts which the writer ob- 

 served at a much later day are mentioned because such perfect art can be 

 acquired only by one of high receptive capacity from good models and 

 very early in life, and the period of his career we are now considering was 

 probably that at which his very remarkable naturalness and grace of 

 movement were learned and became habits. 



He has often spoken of the charm he felt at this period in gazing at the 

 beautiful but capricious blue inland sea ; of his awe in contemplating the 

 desert, and the ruins of ancient civilizilions ; and of his wonder at the 

 deep rooted hatred of the Arabs for the " Christian dogs !" 



He mastered the language of the country in several of its dialects and 

 never forgot it. His recollections as a child of the blistering heat, the 

 suffocating sirocco forcing the impalpable sand of the desert into the very 

 pores of the skin, the darkened rooms, the unassuageable thirst, show that 

 although this was the first climate and land he had really known, having 

 left America when but an infant, his constitution was not adapted to sup- 

 port its rigors as were those of the dwellers in the Levant. 



He related to the writer a rash attempt to ride in the desert but a single 

 mile while one of the scorching south winds was blowing, which nearly 

 cost him his life. 



At the time of the plague in Barbary, in 1837, the Consul and his 

 family moved to Malta, and Mrs. McCauley, with Edward and his step- 

 sister, Rebecca, started for the United States, but while waiting for a fair 

 wind, her heart failed her and she returned to Malta. Mrs. Moore thinks 

 Edward was sent to Malta and put at the school of a Mr. Howard ; and 

 when the plague reached Malta he was removed to the house of Consul 

 General Sprague (or Sharpies?) in Spain (?). It is a tradition also that 

 his attendance at school in Malta was about two years before his appoint- 

 ment as midshipman in the U. S. Navy (which would be 1839). At the lime 

 of the return of his wife the Consul planned a cruise on his yacht to Sicily, 

 leaving Louisa and Mary at school, but taking Edward, who showed a 

 strong disposition to be a sailor, "which I do not oppose, as I see no chance 

 of educating him for a better profession" (D. S. M., letter May 9, 1887). 



They spent two or three months cruising, and returned to Malta in 

 August, 1837, where they found the cholera raging. 



On account of the health of one of his children, the Consul and his 



PKOC. AMEK. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIV. 149. 3 U. PRINTED DEC. 6, 1895. 



