THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN ASTRONOMY. 105 



the latest and best methods for deteimiDing the position of a ship at 

 sea, expressed iu simple rules. American navigators had no suj^eriors 

 in the first half of this century. Nantucket whalers covered the 

 Pacific, Salem ships swarmed in the Indies, and the clipper shij^s made 

 passages round the Horn to San Francisco, which are a wonder to-day. 

 Part of their success is due to the bold enterprise of their captains 

 (who were said to carry deck loads of studding-sail booms to replace 

 those carried away!), but an important part depended on their skill as 

 observers with the sextant. One of the sister ships to the one of which 

 Bowditch was supercargo was visited at Genoa by a Euroi)ean astron- 

 omer of note (Baron de Zach), who found that the latest methods of 

 working lunar distances to determine the longitude were known to all 

 on board, sailors as well as ofQcers. His bewilderment reached its 

 climax when the navigator called the negro cook from the galley and 

 bade him expound the methods of determining the longitude to tiie 

 distinguished visitor. 



On Bowditch's own ship there was " a crew of twelve men, every one 

 of Avhom could take and work a lunar observation as well, for all prac- 

 tical purposes, as Sir Isaac jS"ewton himself." Such crews were only to 

 be found on American ships iu the palmy days of democracy. All were 

 cousins or neighbors and each had a ''venture" in the voyage. But 

 these anecdotes may serve as illustrations of the intellectual awakening 

 which came about as soon as our young country was relieved from the 

 pressure of the two wars of 1776 and 1812. An early visitor. Baron 

 Hyde de IsTeuville (1805) felt "an unknown something in the air," " a 

 new wind blowing." This new spirit, born of freedom, entered first 

 into practical life^, as was but natural; science next felt its impulse, 

 and, last of all, literature was born. Emerson hailed it (in 1837) " as the 

 sign of an indestructible instinct." "Perhaps the time has already 

 come," he says, " when the sluggard intellect of this country will look 

 from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world 

 with something- better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day 

 of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, 

 draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life 

 can not always be fed with the sere remains of foreign harvests." 



Benjamin Peirce, a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1829, had 

 been concerned with the translation of the Mecanique Celeste, and was 

 early familiar with the best mathematical thought of Europe. He 

 became j)rofessor in Harvard College in 1833, and, after the death of 

 Bowditch in 1838, he was easily the first mathematical astronomer in 

 the country. His instruction was precisely fitted to develop superior 

 intelligences, and this was his prime usefulness. Just such a man was 

 needed at that time. Besides his theoretical researches on the orbits 

 of the jilanets (specially Uranus and Neptune) and of the moon, his 

 study of the theory of perturbations, and his w^orks on pure mathe- 

 matics and mechanics, he concerned himself with questions of practical 



