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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



ashore on that island to procure sandal- 

 wood. English ships blockaded the Amer- 

 ican ships in Chinese ports, so that no 

 relief came to John Maury for two years. 

 He was befriended by the king of one 

 of the tribes, and when Matthew Maury 

 visited that island 12 years later the king 

 recognized him from his likeness to his 

 brother and offered to adopt him as his 

 son and heir. King of a heathen tribe 

 and "mated with a squalid savage," could 

 Maury have charted the seas? 



DILIGENCE BRINGS ITS PROVERBIAL 

 REWARD 



There was no Naval Academy when 

 Maury entered the navy. He had been 

 so proficient in mathematics in the coun- 

 try school in Tennessee that he was called 

 upon by his teacher to instruct the 

 younger boys, and on shipboard he con- 

 tinued the methodical study which made 

 him the first scholar and scientist in the 

 navy. 



Using a Spanish work on navigation, 

 he acquired a knowledge of the Spanish 

 language along with a mastery of a sub- 

 ject essential to a seafaring man. In his 

 watches he drilled into his mind the for- 

 mulas from notes made below decks. 



Laying broad foundations, it was not 

 until his voyage around Cape Horn, when 

 he sought in vain for reliable informa- 

 tion as to the winds and currents to be 

 encountered and the best paths for the 

 vessel to follow, that this need deter- 

 mined the particular study to which he 

 would devote himself. When but 28 

 years old he published his treatise on 

 Navigation. It attracted favorable at- 

 tention in this country and abroad and 

 became the text-book of the navy. 



Incapacitated for active service by a 

 broken leg, his ambition for command 

 afloat had to be abandoned, though while 

 on crutches he applied for sea service, 

 which was denied him. Writing to a 

 friend at this time, he said : "I'll con- 

 tent myself with cultivating a few little 

 patches of knowledge. What shall they 

 be ? Shall they be light and heat, storms 

 or currents? Ship-building or ship-sail- 

 ing? steam or projectiles? hollow shot or 

 gravitation? gases or fluids? winds or 

 tides ?-^or— ?" 



His "patches of knowledge" grew until 



they almost covered the geography of the 

 world and all naval lore, as the waters 

 cover the sea. In his famous "Scraps 

 from a Lucky Bag," he advocated the 

 adoption of steam as a motive power and 

 predicted a new era in naval warfare of 

 big guns. Did he dream of a gun that 

 could shoot an hundred miles? 



A FORWARD-LOOKING GENIUS 



He advocated a naval school for mid- 

 shipmen, "that they might be instructed 

 in the higher duties of their profession," 

 and urged the use of regular text-books. 

 His new ideas fairly startled old sea dogs, 

 who basked in the glories of tradition and 

 regarded new things as revolutionary. 

 But the reforms that he proposed de- 

 lighted the thoughtful and ambitious, and 

 stimulated study and exploration and sci- 

 ence in the navy. 



In 1843, he read to a distinguished 

 audience in Washington, composed of 

 the President and envoys and Congress- 

 men, a paper, "The Gulf Stream and Its 

 Causes," and later a paper on the con- 

 nection of terrestial magnetism with the 

 circulation of the atmosphere. 



In 1844, he was made head of the "De- 

 pot of Charts and Instruments," and the 

 National Intelligencer truly declared "he 

 transformed the simple Depot of Charts 

 and Instruments into an observatory" — 

 the Naval Observatory — and it has grown 

 until its reputation is world-wide, and 

 other scientific organizations of the gov- 

 ernment covet its direction. 



In late years there has been more than 

 one suggestion that the Naval Observa- 

 tory, created by Maury and developed by 

 other able naval officers, should be trans- 

 ferred from the navy. In view of such 

 violations of the commandment "thou 

 shalt not covet," it may be well to recall 

 the reason that prompted Maury to ac- 

 cept the post. 



Writing to William Blackford in 1847, 

 Maury said: "You know I did not want 

 the place, and only decided to keep it 

 when I heard that it had been promised 

 to a civilian under the plea that no one 

 in the navy was fit for it. I then went 

 to Mason and pronounced that the repe- 

 tition of a practical libel and told him he 

 must stand by me. ... I have solved 

 a problem that has often blistered my 



