CHAPTER I 

 His Early Years 



No other great American has ever received so many 

 honors abroad and so little recognition at home as has 

 the oceanographer, Matthew Fontaine Maury. While 

 his own country was but meagerly, and sometimes grudg- 

 ingly, rewarding him, there was hardly a civilized foreign 

 country that did not bestow upon him some mark of 

 distinguished consideration. This was not merely a case 

 of distance lending enchantment to the view, but rather 

 one of perspective ; those near him with but few excep- 

 tions had only a partial and incomplete view of the man, 

 while foreigners at a distance saw the complete figure 

 of the great scientist unobscured by the haze of profes- 

 sional jealousy or political and sectional prejudice. But 

 there is another kind of perspective, --that produced by 

 the lapse of time ; hence it is that we now are enabled to 

 appreciate the greatness of a man irrespective of the side 

 he took in the War between the States in those ' 'unhappy 

 things and battles long ago". It is this perspective of 

 time that makes possible the writing of this biography 

 with the confidence that the time has now come when 

 throughout our entire country Maury's greatness as a 

 scientist and as a man will be seen in its true proportions, 

 and his fine struggle against obstacles to attain his ideals 

 and accomplish his purposes will serve as an inspiration 

 and a challenge to every American. 



Whatever the obstacles were that Maury had to con- 

 tend with, there was no handicap in his ancestry, for 



