learning his first lessons in Spanish and Navigation from the 

 same book, and had many a kindly talk with him. 



Later, the Brandywine cruised in British and Mediterranean 

 waters, returning to America in 1826, after transferring Maury 

 to the sloop-of-war Vincennes for the cruise around the world, 

 which occupied four years. During this voyage the Vincennes 

 touched at Nukahiva, one of the French Marquesas group. This 

 island was reminiscent of his brother John's enforced two years' 

 sojourn there during the second war with Great Britain. His was 

 a genuine "Robinson Crusoe" experience, too thrilling to omit yet 

 too long to be included in this record. The King of the Isle rec- 

 ognized Matthew from his resemblance to his brother and offered 

 to adopt him as his son and heir, but neither the honor nor the 

 life in the cocoanut grove appealed to the young midshipman. 



He continued his study of Navigation, Spanish, and Spher- 

 ical Trigonometry during the cruise and was a close observer of 

 winds and currents. Upon his return, after his examinations, he 

 received the advanced rank of passed midshipman and in 1831 

 was appointed sailing-master of the sloop-of-war Falmouth, on 

 the Pacific Station. Anxious to make a quick trip and unable to 

 find in New York sufficient information on winds and currents, 

 he resolved some day to supply this need. 



Soon after his return to the East, in 1834, he married his 

 cousin, Miss Ann Herndon, whom he met on his first visit to Vir- 

 ginia in 1825. During the next two years, he prepared for pub- 

 lication a treatise on navigation the first nautical work of science 

 that had ever come from the pen of a naval officer "a book that 

 carried the fame of its author to the most distant countries of the 

 earth." 



His last active sea service was the making of surveys of the 

 Southern Harbors. After more than a year of this work, in 1839, 

 ^Maury obtained a few weeks' leave to visit his aged parents in 

 Tennessee and make arrangements to bring them to Virginia to 

 live with him. On his return trip, at Somerset, Ohio, he was so 

 severely injured in a stage-coach accident that he would be for 

 ever unfit for active sea service. He regarded this as the great- 

 est calamity of his life, but it proved another blessing in disguise 

 and really set him forward in a broader and richer field of achieve- 



