226 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



proposed salary was raised to $5000, so anxious were the 

 board to have him at the head of the institution, and 

 Maury finally accepted on July 30, 1871 by telegraph, 

 "I will come". But on August 17, he resigned the po- 

 sition on the grounds that the arrangements for funds 

 for the University were unsatisfactory and not in agree- 

 ment with verbal statements made to him. He had 

 gone so far as to write out his inaugural address and 

 send copies of it to various Southern newspapers, and 

 his "Manual of Geography", which was published at 

 about this time, bore on its title page the statement that 

 he was the President of the University of Alabama. 



It was then that Raphael Semmes, famous commander 

 of the Alabama, under the impression that Maury was 

 soon to be at the head of the university of his native 

 Alabama, wrote a eulogy of his friend, which appeared 

 in the Montgomery Advance of September 25, 1871. 

 It closed with the following estimate of Maury's achieve- 

 ments: "Thou hast revealed to us the secrets of the 

 depths of the ocean, traced its currents, discoursed to us 

 of its storms and its calms, and taught us which of its 

 roads to travel and which to avoid. Every mariner, 

 for countless ages to come, as he takes down his charts 

 to shape his course across the seas, will think of thee! 

 He will think of thee as he casts his lead into the deep 

 sea; he will think of thee as he draws a bucket of water 

 from it to examine its animalculse ; he will think of thee 

 as he sees the storm gathering thick and ominous; he 

 will think of thee as he approaches the calm-belts, and 

 especially the calm-belts of the equator, with its mys- 

 terious cloud rings; he will think of thee as he is scudding 

 before the 'brave west winds* of the Southern hemisphere ; 

 in short, there is no phenomenon of the sea that will 



