CHAPTER III 



MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE, 1833-1834 



Teacher of Midshipmen in the United States Navy Voyage to the Medi- 

 terranean Gibraltar to Smyrna First Impressions of Nautical Life 

 Port Mahon Scientific Studies Ascent of Vesuvius. 



THE future naturalist, whose pedigree has been given 

 and whose training at home, at school, and at college 

 has been traced in outline, began to look forward, when 

 he entered upon the studies of his senior year at Yale, to 

 the problems of the future. There were then in this 

 country no opportunities for graduate studies, as they are 

 now called, excepting those which led to the professions 

 of law, medicine, and theology. The pathway to natural 

 science often went through the portals of medicine, not 

 only on this side of the ocean, but abroad. It does not 

 appear that Dana, after the attainment of the Yale bacca- 

 laureate, ever thought of visiting Great Britain in the 

 pursuit of science, like Silliman and many -a physician in 

 the early part of the century, or of following Bancroft, 

 Woolsey, and other classical scholars to one of the uni- 

 versities of Germany. There is an indication that he 

 looked with longing to the science of Paris, to which the 

 name of Cuvier had given world-wide renown. But in- 

 stead he became, as we have seen, a teacher of midship- 

 men upon a vessel destined to the Mediterranean. For 

 him, this was an ideal position. It afforded intellectual 

 occupation, salary, leisure, and abundance of opportuni- 

 ties. Neither lecture-room nor laboratory would have 



21 



