384 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



panied by a parade of Swedish societies and appropriate exer- 

 cises. No more fitting time could have been chosen to do 

 honour to the inventor of the screw propeller and the Monitor, 

 for the harbour was filled with picked vessels from the navies 

 of the world, assembled for the Columbian naval parade of 

 the following day. 



While his literary works'were not numerous, Captain Erics- 

 son was a writer of force and ability, with imaginative facul- 

 ties that might have been developed under cultivation. In 

 his youth, and while engaged in his surveying work, he some- 

 times, he says, " wrote poetry to the wonderful and enchanting 

 midnight light of Norrland. Connoisseurs often doubted that 

 it came from the second lieutenant and surveyor among the 

 mountains." His communications to the periodical press on 

 the subjects in which he was interested were clear and vigor- 

 ous, and always acceptable. 



He was a man of intense patriotism, which he manifested 

 equally toward his native land, although he never returned to 

 it, and the United States, the country of his adoption. In his 

 studies and inventions he had always in view the protection 

 of Sweden against the aggressive stronger powers; and he 

 gave the fruits of them ungrudgingly to the United States 

 not always insisting upon his reward as persistently as he 

 had a right to do, and too often not receiving it, or receiving 

 it at the expense of delay and trouble not creditable to our 

 Government. His gifts to Sweden, after he became prosperous, 

 were numerous and beautiful, and included contributions for 

 the relief of sufferers from famine and from a fire at Carlstad, 

 and for a benevolent fund for the aged miners and miners' 

 widows of his native province ; a subscription to the Royal 

 Library of Stockholm ; the guns for the first Swedish monitor ; 

 and a gunboat for coast defence. In 1867 the miners of his 

 native region erected in front of the house in which he was 

 born, at their own expense, a large granite monument, bearing 

 the inscription, in Swedish, " John Ericsson was born here in 

 1803." 



We are very largely indebted for the detail of the facts 

 concerning Captain Ericsson's inventions to the excellent biog- 

 raphy of him by Mr. William C. Church, in two volumes, which 

 was published in 1890. 



