20 MEMOIR OF 



pressed in a letter to his friend Professor Silliman, 

 dated Alicant, March 6, 1824. 



" I have been much disappointed in being prevent- 

 ed from executing my Mineralogical excursions in 

 Spain, by the bands of powerful robbers that have 

 long infested the astonishingly extended surface of 

 uncultivated and inhospitable wilds in this naturally 

 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 water 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 Agricul- 

 tural School on a plan similar to that he had attempted 

 in Spain. At this juncture the settlement at New 

 Harmony, in Indiana, had been purchased by the 

 eccentric author of the Social System; and many 

 intelligent persons, deceived by a plausible theory, 

 went forth to join the Utopian colony; and Mr. 

 Maclure himself, willing to test the validity of a sys- 



* American Journal of Science, vol. viii, p. LS7. 



