18 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



Leaving behind the northern Bashee Islands, which 

 are considered one of the barriers of the Pacific as well as 

 one of the portals to the Celestial Empire, the ship came 

 to anchor on January 3, 1830 in the roads of Macao, a 

 Portuguese city, situated on a small island about seventy 

 miles from Canton. The Vincennes thus gained the 

 distinction of being the second American man-of-war to 

 visit Chinese waters, having been preceded only by the 

 Congress in 1819. After receiving a statement from the 

 American consul and merchants at Canton on the advis- 

 ability of having American men-of-war make periodic 

 visits to Chinese waters, Captain Finch was off again, 

 this time for the Philippines. 



After a brief visit at Manila, the ship turned towards 

 home, and, stopping in the Straits of Sunda and at Cape 

 Town, on the first of May came in sight of the Island of 

 St. Helena. Here ample time was afforded the officers 

 for seeing Longwood House in which Napoleon had lived 

 and also his tomb, from which the body of the great 

 general had not at that time been removed to Paris. 

 After leaving this island, the ship made no other stop 

 until she arrived in New York on the 8th of June, 1830, 

 with her band appropriately playing, ''Hail Columbia! 

 Happy Land!" 



After almost four years to a day, Maury was home 

 again ; but he was no longer the raw lad from the Tennes- 

 see backwoods, for the information and experience which 

 he had gained on this cruise of the first American man-of- 

 war to circumnavigate the globe had gone a long way 

 towards taking the place of a college education. Men 

 of the stamp of Commodore Charles Morris, Lieutenant 

 Farragut, Captain Finch, Chaplain Stewart, and dozens 

 of other officers with whom he had come in contact dur- 



