CHAPTER VII 

 DANA'S OWN LETTERS, 1838-1842 



Aspects of Nature in the Pacific Ocean Madeira The Perils of Cape 

 Horn Glimpses of the Patagonians Views of the Andes Missions in 

 the Pacific Impressions of Australia The Antarctic Discovery The 

 Scientific Work of the Expedition The Feejee and Sandwich Islands 

 Discovery of Bowditch Island Loss of the Peacock Feejeeari Life 

 Later Letters not Discovered. 



extended narrative now given was partly de- 

 1 rived from Dana's correspondence and partly from 

 Wilkes's volumes, and yet the reader will doubtless wel- 

 come a selection from the ipsissima verba of the naturalist, 

 sometimes written to his family and sometimes to his 

 scientific friends. Many of his letters have disappeared, 

 but more have been preserved than can here be printed, 

 The same incidents are frequently described in more than 

 one letter. The regulations of the cruise required that 

 all notes, diaries, and specimens made and collected by 

 the officers and the scientific corps should be surrendered 

 to the commander; but the only restriction upon corre- 

 spondence was the injunction of reticence respecting dis- 

 coveries. Even that was relaxed in respect to the South 

 Polar expedition. 



In reading over Dana's accounts of what he saw and 

 thought, I wish that he had written a popular account of 

 the voyage. No one could have done it so well as he ; 

 nobody can do it now. He might have written a nar- 

 rative which would have been a companion volume to 

 Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist, Wallace's Malayan 



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