MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 



469 



be given. About three years afterward, in an address at De- 

 catur, Ala., as if foreseeing that his services might become for- 

 gotten, he said : " Take notice, now, that this plan of crop and 

 weather reports is my thunder; and if you see some one in 

 Washington running away with it, then recollect, if you please, 

 where the lightning came from." The whole record of Maury's 

 meteorological work, and his part in advocating this plan, were 

 reviewed by Senator Harlan, in a committee report to the 

 United States Senate, made in 1857. His scheme also em- 

 braced a system of meteorological observations on the Great 

 Lakes. Records had already been kept for many years by the 

 army, to which, Maury acknowledged, " alone we are indebted 

 for almost all we know concerning the climatology of the coun- 

 try " ; but he explained that their value was retrospective ; 

 while the observations he proposed were to be used for predic- 

 tions and warnings of what the weather was to be. 



As early as 1848 Maury had concluded, from his investiga- 

 tions of the winds and currents, that a broad and level plateau 

 the " telegraphic plateau " existed at the bottom of the 

 ocean between Newfoundland and Ireland. His view was con- 

 firmed by the deep-sea soundings that were taken at his in- 

 stance between 1849 and 1853; and early in 1854 he reported 

 to the Secretary of the Navy that, so far as the bottom of the 

 deep sea was concerned, a submarine telegraph between New- 

 foundland and Ireland was practicable. A plateau seemed to 

 have been placed there especially for holding the wires and 

 keeping them out of harm's way. His views respecting the 

 manner of constructing cables were confirmed, both in the be- 

 haviour of the first cable, constructed differently from them, 

 which failed, and the others, made more in harmony with them, 

 which were successful. At the dinner given in celebration of 

 the arrival of the first message across the Atlantic, Mr. Cyrus 

 W. Field said, referring to the enterprise, " Maury furnished 

 the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work." 



A painful surprise came to Lieutenant Maury when the 

 Naval Retiring Board, under the act of Congress of February 

 28, 1855, placed him on the retired list on leave-of-absence pay, 

 but without detaching him from the Naval Observatory. He 

 regarded the act as an indignity. He wrote to three of the 

 Secretaries of the Navy under whom he had served for expres- 

 sions concerning his efficiency, particularly inquiring why he 



