HIS EXTR.\-PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS 93 



the nucleus of a navy. He was opposed to floating 

 batteries, but favored twenty or twenty-five steam 

 men-of-war as a home squadron and thought some 

 provision should be made against surprise on the Lakes. 

 In closing, he declared, "The ocean front of the United 

 States alone is greater in extent than the ocean front of 

 the whole of Europe; therefore, like action to the orator, 

 a navy to us is the first, second, and third chief requisite 

 to any effective system of national defense". 



The same year Maury turned again to the "Commer- 

 cial Prospects of the South", which he made the subject 

 of an address before the Virginia Mercantile Convention 

 at Richmond. In this he called attention to what might 

 have happened if Norfolk had become the terminus of a 

 French line of steam packets to Havre, as he had sug- 

 gested some dozen years before. Now, he said, the 

 South must look toward the south; in view of the im- 

 portance of "our Mediterranean" into which big rivers 

 flow that are the arteries of much commerce, and because 

 of the potential riches of the Amazon which will be 

 vastly increased b}^ the construction of a canal or rail- 

 road across the Isthmus, a line of steamers from Norfolk, 

 Charleston, or Savannah to the mouth of the Amazon 

 should at once be established. This enterprise, together 

 with the need for building railroads in the South, was 

 constantly in Maury's mind and often became a subject 

 of correspondence down to the beginning of the Civil 

 War. 



Maury seems to have become almost as ready a 

 speaker as he was a writer, and as his fame grew he was 

 frequently called upon to speak on scientific questions 

 and large problems of a commercial nature. In 1846, 

 he addressed the Philodemic Society at the commence- 



