B Memoir of William Maclure. 



thraldom" to which they had been subjected by the institutions 

 of their country. He purchased of the government 10,000 acres 

 of land near the city of Alicant ; and having repaired the build- 

 ings, and placed "the estate in complete order, he prepared to com- 

 mence his scheme of practical benevolence. Scarcely, however, 

 were these arrangements made, when the constitutional govern- 

 ment was overthrown, and the old institutions, with all their abu- 

 ses, were again imposed upon this unfortunate country. The pro- 

 perty which Mr. Maclure had purchased from the Cortes had been 

 confiscated from the church ; and as the priesthood were now re- 

 invested in their estates, they proceeded to dispossess him without 

 ceremony or reimbursement. 



Disappointed and mortified by this adverse termination of his 

 plans, Mr. Maclure abandoned them as hopeless, and prepared to 

 return to the United States. Before doing so, however, he visit- 

 ed various parts of southern Spain, chiefly with a view to scien- 

 tific investigation. But even in this unoffending employment he 

 found himself surrounded by new dangers, which compelled him 

 to reUnquish much that he had proposed to accomplish ; and his 

 feelings, and the causes which gave rise to them, are forcibly ex- 

 pressed in a letter to his friend Professor Silliman, dated Alicant, 

 March 6, 1824. 



" I have been much disappointed in being prevented from exe- 

 cuting my mineralogical excursions in Spain, by the bands of 

 powerful robbers that have long infested the astonishingly exten- 

 ded surface of uncultivated and inhospitable wilds in this natural- 

 ly delightful country. Not that I require any money worth the 

 robbing to supply me with all that I need — for the regimen which 

 I adopt for the" promotion of my health, demands nothing but wa- 

 ter and a very small quantity of the most common food — but 

 these barbarians have adopted the Algerine system of taking you, 

 as a slave, to the mountains, where they exact a ransom of as 

 many thousand dollars as they conceive the property you possess 

 will enable you to pay."* 



On returning to the United States in 1824, Mr. Maclure was 

 still intent on establishing an agricultural school on a plan simi- 

 lar to that he had attempted in Spain. At this juncture the set- 

 tlement at New Harmony, in Indiana, had been purchased by the 

 eccentric author of the Social system ; and many intelligent per- 



* American Journal of Science, Vol. vni, p, 187. 



