LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



one ration while on duty. The pay would begin July 4, 

 1837. He was to be the mineralogist and geologist. 



Of course many preparations must be made for a jour- 

 ney so prolonged. Two or three articles, read before the 

 Yale Natural History Society, were prepared for publica- 

 tion. The treatise on Mineralogy, which was soon to 

 establish his reputation, was carried through the press. 

 He arranged for the care of his cabinet of minerals, his 

 collection of plants, and his books on mineralogy, and, as 

 if he were mindful that he might never return, he drew 

 up six pages of personal memoranda respecting his scien- 

 tific work between 1833 and 1837. Meanwhile uncertain- 

 ties multiplied respecting the organization and departure 

 of the expedition. " I have been anxiously looking for 

 news," he writes to his brother John, in June, 1837, 

 " but as yet nothing has come. When we shall go is 

 as utterly unknown to me as it is to yourself. Indeed 

 there are some floating reports and predictions that the 

 expedition will not sail at all. But I do not place much 

 confidence in them. There has been so much opposi- 

 tion to the expedition, and so many unfavorable re- 

 ports spread about by its opponents, that I consider the 

 whole of them as their fabrication." This doubt con- 

 tinued till the spring of 1838. " It is now probable that 

 we shall not go before August," he writes. " Part of 

 the scientific corps will probably be cut off; but there is 

 no probability that I shall be 'one of the number." The 

 nearer the departure, the more the excitement of prepara- 

 tion. 



Frequent letters to Herrick give the details of Dana's 

 occupations. For example, he meets Professor Joseph 

 Henry, just returned from a European tour, and he goes 

 to Philadelphia for conference with his scientific colleagues 

 in respect to the distribution of their duties. Herrick 

 insists upon his watching for shooting stars at the time of 

 their recurrence in November, and Dana watches on the 



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