LT. MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY - Kouroo...Books electronic copy for the 1847 edition from the same publisher (New York: Bartlett & Welford) and have reason to expect this to be equivalent

LT. MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

Matthew Fontaine Maury “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

mailto:[email protected] subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY LT. MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY

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January 14, Tuesday: Matthew Fontaine Maury was born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. His mother’s ancestors, of the “Minor” family, had come to Virginia from Holland, and his father Richard Maury’s ancestors had been Huguenots (his granddaddy the Reverend James Maury had taught Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe).

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1806


http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf




LT. MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY

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While Matthew Fontaine Maury was five years of age his family relocated from Virginia to Franklin, Tennessee. He would think to emulate the career of an older brother, Flag Lieutenant John Minor Maury, a pirate fighter, until, after Lt. Maury had died of yellow fever, Matthew’s father Richard Maury would refuse to consider allowing his younger son to enlist. Matthew would contemplate a career beginning at the West Point Military Academy, until his family would be able to use its connections and the influence of Senator Sam Houston to secure for him at the age of 19 a direct Naval appointment.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1811








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William H. Day was born in New-York. His father would die and he would be adopted by a white reformer of Northampton. He would attend school there, before being apprenticed to the print shop of a newspaper.

The geriatric general Lafayette visited Northampton.

Through family political connections and the assistance of Senator Sam Houston, the 19-year-old Matthew Fontaine Maury joined the Navy as a midshipman on board the frigate Brandywine, which in the second half of that year would be carrying the Marquis home to France.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1825








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At age 19, Matthew Fontaine Maury joined the United States Navy as a midshipman on board the frigate Brandywine. Almost immediately he began to study the seas and record methods of navigation. When a leg injury left him unfit for sea duty, Maury devoted his time to the study of navigation, meteorology, winds, and currents. His hard work on and love of plotting the oceans paid off when he became Superintendent of the US Naval Observatory and head of the Depot of Charts and Instruments. Here Maury studied thousands of ships’

logs and charts. He published the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, which showed sailors how to use the ocean’s currents and winds to their advantage and drastically reduced the length of ocean voyages. Maury’s uniform system of recording oceanographic data was adopted by navies and merchant marines around the world and was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes.

In this year President John Quincy Adams, whose personal hobby was stargazing, signed a bill for the creation of a National Observatory. It would take many years to arrange federal funding, but eventually as a Congressman again, he would spend many nights there with Lt. Maury, watching and charting the stars.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT








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Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury sailed around the Horn as master of the sloop of war Falmouth.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1831








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At the age of 33, Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury’s seagoing days came to an abrupt end when his hip and knee were shattered in a stagecoach accident. Thereafter, he would devote himself to the study of naval meteorology, navigation, charting the winds and currents, seeking out the “Paths of the Seas” that had been mentioned in THE BOOK OF PSALMS 8.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1839

TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS

REFER TO PSALMS 8:8





http://bible.cc/psalms/8-8.htm




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The new naval Lieutenant William Lewis Herndon was assigned to work with his relative Matthew Fontaine Maury in preparation of ocean charts at the Depot of Charts and Instruments.

Lieutenant Uriah Phillips Levy, the only Jewish officer in the US Navy, was promoted to Captain by President John Tyler.

1842

JUDAISM





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August: The federal Congress provided funding for the National Observatory (the hobby of President John Quincy Adams had been stargazing). When the facility was created, everything appeared to be in order, but then it was discovered that Lt. James Melville Gilliss of the US Navy had failed to properly oversee the construction, and the placing of the instruments, and that the concrete beneath the telescopes and other equipment was dangerously weak and damp. Everything had had to be removed while the structure was repaired, and while that had been going on Gillis was reassigned elsewhere. The new facility came therefore to be under the direction of the crippled Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury. The facility’s primary mission was to care for

the United States Navy’s marine chronometers, charts, and other navigational equipment. It would calibrate ships’ chronometers by timing the transit of stars across the meridian. Initially located downtown in Foggy Bottom (near the Lincoln Memorial), the observatory would not be relocated to Observatory Hill overlooking Massachusetts Avenue until 1893, amidst perfectly circular grounds. For the initial dozen years of its existence this facility would be referred to alternatively as the National Observatory and as the US Naval Observatory, and Lt. Maury would need to prepare each and every document and letter in duplicate under each designation until this nomenclature issue would be resolved in follow-on legislation. At the facility, Maury would data-mine an enormous collection of old ships’ logs and charts for observations on winds, calms, and currents for all seas in all seasons, discovering, for instance, that these documents could be used to determine the migration patterns of various species of whales. Because whales had been described in the Pacific Ocean as having





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carried in their bodies old harpoons of a design used only in the Atlantic and vice versa, and because whales had not been observed to journey via the channels at the tip of South America, he hypothesized that there must be occasions on which the north polar ocean is sufficiently free of its crust of ice to allow these breathing mammals to transit.

Herman Melville was picked up by an Australian whaler, the Lucy Ann, signing on for 1/200ths of whatever proceeds were generated by its voyage. There would be, however, no proceeds to speak of, and he would participate in a revolt of the crew, winding up in prison with them on Tahiti. When released, he would spend a few months exploring the fauna and flora of Tahiti and Eimeo.





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The 12th time ball in the world, the 1st in the USA and the 1st vulcanized one anywhere, was created by Charles Goodyear to Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury’s specification. The time ball would be mounted above the US Naval Observatory and dropped, by hand of course, every day except Sunday, at the astronomically defined moment of Mean Solar Noon.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

1845








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Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury published his WIND AND CURRENT CHART OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC, which showed sailors how to use the ocean’s currents and winds to their advantage and drastically reduced the length of ocean voyages.

1847





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Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury’s ABSTRACT LOG FOR THE USE OF AMERICAN NAVIGATORS.

Richard Owen described “homologies” — similarities of design in bird wings, fish fins and human hands.

The AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was founded after the model of a British Association for the Advancement of Science which had been in existence for some 17 years. Lt. Maury of the US Naval Observatory was present for its initial meeting. Joseph Henry (1797-1898), who had been appointed the 1st secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, became its 1st Secretary. In this year was issued the 1st publication of the new Smithsonian Institution, Ephraim George Squier’s and Edwin H. Davis’s ANCIENT MONUMENTS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. Thoreau would in 1849 copy the following materials into his Indian Notebook #3:1

We do not, unfortunately, have electronic copy of the 1848 printing that Thoreau saw, but we do have Google Books electronic copy for the 1847 edition from the same publisher (New York: Bartlett & Welford) and have reason to expect this to be equivalent.

James Ellsworth De Kay became a member of this new entity, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This association established Science Magazine, which was to become one of the world’s foremost science journals.

1848

1. The original notebooks are held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, as manuscripts #596 through #606. There are photocopies, made by Robert F. Sayre in the 1930s, in four boxes at the University of Iowa Libraries, accession number MsC 795. More recently, Bradley P. Dean, PhD and Paul Maher, Jr. have attempted to work over these materials.

Arrowheads, differing from each other only in varietyof stone of which they are composed, are discovered inall quarters of the globe. They have been found in ...Liberia, in the tombs of Egypt ... upon the plains ofGreece ... and in the rude monuments of ancientScandinavia.

A simple heap of earth or stones seems to have been thefirst monument which suggested itself to man; thePyramid, the arch, and the obelisk are evidences of amore advanced state. But rude as are these primitivememorials, they have been but little impaired by time,while other more imposing structures have sunk intoshapeless ruins.

EPHRAIM GEORGE SQUIER

THE SCIENCE OF 1848




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/48/1847_EGSquier.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_in_science


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Caleb G. Forshey was a member of a Louisiana delegation to the national railroad convention held in Memphis, Tennessee.

Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury spoke out on the need for a transcontinental railroad to join the eastern United States to California. He recommended a southerly route with Memphis, Tennessee as the eastern terminus, since that city was halfway between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico. He argued that a southerly route running through Texas would avoid winter snows and could open up commerce with the northern states of Mexico. Maury also advocated construction of a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama.

The Nautical Almanac Office originated in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an organization entirely distinct from the US Naval Observatory (in 1866 this would be, however, relocated to the grounds of that observatory in Washington DC — and in 1894 it would get reclassified as a “branch” of that naval organization).

1849





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May 21, Wednesday: Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury of the US Naval Observatory sent his cousin, Lt. William Lewis Herndon and Lt. Lardner Gibbon, both of whom worked at the observatory, to explore the Valley of the Amazon region to Brazil and the Atlantic Ocean, while gathering as much information as possible for trade and slavery in any of those areas. The Negro was a problem! Maury detested race slavery and was hoping that the area might serve as a “safety valve” in American politics, by allowing the Southern white slavemasters to dispose of their obligations by “selling them South” to slave plantations in Brazil, or at least to relocate their plantations to that more distant and therefore less newsworthy locale. “Imagine,” Maury wrote to a cousin, “waking up some day and finding our country free of slavery!” His reasoning was that since the negrero vessels were bringing fresh crops of slaves across the Atlantic to Brazil from the coast of Africa all the time anyhow, if Americans could sell those who were already slaves in the United States south to Brazil then this would not only mean less slavery locally, or in time perhaps no slavery in as many areas of the United States as possible, but would also cut down somewhat on the demand for fresh recruitments of slaves from Africa. Oh, he was such a benign and practical white man! Can’t you see how he was wracking his brain for a good enough way to get rid of people?

The expedition in question would begin at Lima, Peru with the two lieutenants and five other men, 4,366 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. To get to the valley of the Amazon their parties would need first to pass over the Cordilleras, via a pass that rose to an altitude of 16,199 feet.

May 21, Wednesday: Yesterday I made out the black and the white Ashes– A double male White ashin Miles’ swamp and 2 black ashes with sessile leaflets– A female White ash near RR –in Stows land. TheWhite Ashes by Mr Pritchards have no blossoms, at least as yetIf I am right the black ash is improperly so called from the color of its bark being lighter than the white– Thoughit answers to the description in other respects even to the elder-like odor of the leaves, I should like still to seea description of the Yellow Ash which grows in Maine.The day before yesterday I found the male sassafras in abundance but no female.The leaves of my new pine on Merriams or Pine Hill are of intermediate length between those of the YellowPine & the Norway Pine– I can find no cone to distinguish the tree by. But as the leaves are semi cylindrical &not hollowed I think it must be the red or Norway Pine –though it does not look very red –& is spruce!answering perhaps to the description of the Yellow Pine which is sometimes called Spruce Pine.To day examined the flowers of the Nemopanthus Canadensis –a genus of a single species says Emerson– Itbears the beautiful crimson velvety berry of the swamps –& is what I have heard called the cornel. Commonname Wild Holly.I have heard now within a few days that peculiar dreaming sound of the frogs which belongs to the summer –their midsummer nights dream.Only that thought & that expression are good which are musical.I think that we are not commonly aware that man is our contemporary. That in this strange outlandish world –so barren so prosaic –fit not to live in but merely to pass through. that even here so divine a creature as mandoes actually live. Man the crowning fact –the god we know. While the earth supports so rare an inhabitant thereis somewhat to cheer us. Who shall say that there is no God, if there is a just man.It is only within a year that it has occurred to me that there is such a being actually existing on the globe. Nowthat I perceive that it is so –many questions assume a new aspect. We have not only the idea & vision of thedivine ourselves but we have brothers, it seems who have this idea also– Methinks my neighbor is better thanI; and his thought is better than mine– There is a representative of the divinity on earth –of all things fair &noble are to be expected. We have the material of heaven here. I think that the standing miracle to man is man–behind the paling –yonder come rain or shine –hope or doubt –there dwells a man. an actual being who cansympathize with our sublimest thoughts.

1851




Whenever and wherever you see this little pencil icon in the pages of this Kouroo Contexture, it is marking an extract from the journal of Henry David Thoreau. OK?


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The revelations of nature are infinitely glorious & cheering –hinting to us of a remote future –of possibilitiesuntold –but startlingly near to us some day we find a fellow man.The frog had eyed the heavens from his marsh, until his mind was filled with visions, & he saw more thanbelongs to this fenny earth– He mistrusted that he was become a dreamer & visionary –leaping across theswamp to his fellow what was his joy & consolation to find that he too had seen the same sights in the heavens–he too had dreamed the same dreamsFrom nature we turn astonished to this near but supernatural factI think that the existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts– It is a fact which fewhave realized.I can go to my neighbors & meet on ground as elevated as we could expect to meet upon if we were now inheaven.

“And we live,We of this mortal mixture, in the same lawAs the pure colourless intelligenceWhich dwells in Heaven, & the dead Hadëan shades.”

I do not think that man can –understand the importance of man’s existence –its bearing on the other phenomenaof life untill it shall become a remembrance to him the survivor that such a being or such a race once existed onthe earth. Imagine yourself alone in the world a musing wondering reflecting spirit lost in thought– Andimagine thereafter the creation of man! Man made in the image of God!Looking into a book on dentistry the other day I observed a list of authors who had written on this subject. Therewere Ran & Tan and Yungerman –& I was impressed by the fact that there was nothing in a name– It was as ifthey had been named by the child’s rigmarole of Iery ichery van tittle tol tan &c– I saw in my mind a herd ofwild creatures swarming over the earth –and to each one its own herdsman had affixed some barbarous nameor sound or syllables, in his own dialect –so in a thousand languages– Their names were seen to be asmeaningless exactly as bose or Tray the names of dogs. Men get named no better.We seem to be distinct ourselves, never repeated –& yet we bear no names which express a proportionatedistinctness –they are quite accidental.– Take away their names & you leave men a wild herd distinguishedonly by their individual qualities.It is as if you were to give names in the Caffre dialect to the individuals in a herd of spring-bocks –or GnusWe have but few patronymics –but few Christian names in proportion to the number of us. Is it that men ceasedto be original when genuine & original names ceased to be given. Have we not enough character to establish anew patronymicMethinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross as they are known.It would only be necessary to know the genus & perchance the species & variety –to know the individual.I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me but still see men in herds for all them. A familiar namecannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earnedin the woods. I see that this neighbor who wears the familiar epithet of William or Edwin takes it off with hisjacket –it does not adhere to him when asleep or when in anger –or aroused by any passion or inspiration– Iseem to hear pronounced by some of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw breaking or elsemelodious tongue– As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them.Our names are as cheap as the names given to dogs– We know what are dogs names– We know what are men’snames. Some times it would be significant and truer –it would lead to generalization –it would avoidexaggeration –to say There was a man who said or did –instead of designating him by some familiar, butperchance delusive name.We hardly believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his ownIt is interesting to see how the names of famous men are repeated. even of great poets & philosophers. The poetis not know today even by his neighbors to be more than a common man– He is perchance the butt ofmany The proud farmer looks down –& boorishly ignores him but perchance in course of time the poet willhave so succeeded –that some of the farmer’s posterity –though equally boorish with their ancestor will bearthe poets name. The boor names his boy Homer & so succumbs unknowingly to the bard’s victorious fame–Anything so fine as poetic genius he cannot more directly recognize. The unpoetic farmer names his child

Homer.You have a wild savage in you –and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as yours.2





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August/September: Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury had early became convinced that adequate scientific knowledge of the sea could be obtained only through international cooperation.

He proposed that the United States invite the maritime nations of the world to a conference to establish a “universal system” of meteorology, and he was the leading spirit of that pioneer scientific conference when it met in Brussels. Soon after this “First International Maritime Conference held at Brussels in 1853 for devising an Uniform System of Meteorological Observations at Sea,” Prussia, Spain, Sardinia, the free city of Hamburg, the republic of Bremen, Chile, Austria, Brazil, and other nations would enroll themselves in the enterprise. The Pope would offer flags of distinction to the ships of the papal states that submitted abstracts of their ships’ logs to Lt. Maury in Washington DC. Within a few years, nations possessing 3/4ths of the shipping of the world would be sending oceanographic observations to Maury at the US Naval Observatory, where the

2. Thoreau would later copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT”:

1853

[Paragraph 24] Work is cheap, but thought and character are rare. And is it notsignificant, that after all the farmer will perhaps name his son — Homer, orMilton?1

1. Bradley P. Dean has emended the manuscript copy-text by changing the terminal punctuation in this sentence from a period to a question mark.





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information could be evaluated and given worldwide distribution.

THE SHORTHAND REPORT




http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Maury,_Matthew_Fontaine,_USN,_1853_--_Brussels_--_First_International_Maritime_Conference_Held_For_Devising_An_Uniform_System_Of_Meteorological_Observations_At_Sea.


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Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury’s PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, the first extensive and comprehensive book on oceanography.

1854





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February 16, Thursday: Francis Sales died, leaving his daughter Mary Catherine Sales.3

Henry Thoreau was reading Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella’s DE RE RUSTICA.

In the afternoon he walked to Walden Pond and Flint Pond, returning home on the turnpike.

The New York Daily Times reported an address by Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury before the Geographical and Nautical Society. Thoreau would copy from this article into his Fact Book.

3. Sales’s papers have migrated to the Harvard Library (HUG1763). The “Sales Prize” of $60 is awarded to Harvard students “who shall have commenced the study of that language at Harvard College and whose scholarship shall be determined by his proficiency in Spanish Composition.” This award is made possible out of income from his bequest.

REI RUSTICAE AUCTORES...

There were a great many holidays at Plumfield, and one of the most delightful was the yearly apple-picking, — for then the Marches, Laurences, Brookes, and Bhaers turned out in full force, and made a day of it. Five years after Jo’s wedding, one of these fruitful festivals occurred. — A mellow October day, when the air was full of an exhilarating freshness which made the spirits rise and the blood dance healthily in the veins. The old orchard wore its holiday attire; golden-rod and asters fringed the mossy walls; grasshoppers skipped briskly in the sere grass, and crickets chirped like fairy pipers at a feast. Squirrels were busy with their small harvesting; birds twittered their adieux from the alders in the lane; and every tree stood ready to send down its shower of red or yellow apples at the first shake. Everybody was there, — everybody laughed and sang, climbed up and tumbled down; everybody declared that there never had been such a perfect day or such a jolly set to enjoy it, — and every one gave themselves up to the simple pleasures of the hour as freely as if there were no such things as care or sorrow in the world.

Mr. March strolled placidly about, quoting Tusser, Cowley, and Columella to Mr. Laurence, while enjoying

“The gentle apple’s winey juice.”




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/15/90DECADE/95/1595_ReiRusticaeAuctores.pdf


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Matthew Fontaine Maury’s SAILING DIRECTIONS.

THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. BY M.F. MAURY, LL.D., LIEUT. U.S. NAVY, SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED AND IMPROVED (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 329 & 331 Pearl Street, Franklin Square) — Henry Thoreau would obtain this volume from the Concord Town Library in about 1856, and make notes in his Fact Book.

Lt. Maury’s team at the US Naval Observatory included Lt. James Melville Gilliss, Lt. John Mercer Brooke, Lt. William Lewis Herndon, Lt. Isaac Strain, Lt. Lardner Gibbon, John Herndon Maury of the Darien Gap expedition, and others — but duty at the Observatory was always temporary, and over and over new men would need to be trained.

1855

MAURY’S SEA GEOGRAPHY




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/55/1855_LtMaury_SeaGeography.pdf


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Thomas Ewbank’s THE WORLD A WORKSHOP, OR THE PHYSICAL RELATION OF MAN TO THE EARTH.

The 1st US Naval Scientific Expedition had been that of Charles Wilkes to the Pacific Ocean and the 2d that of William Francis Lynch to Palestine. The 3d such expedition had been that of Lt. James Melville Gilliss to South America. It had traveled overland to Panama City and then via the South Pacific to Callao, Valparaiso, and Santiago. It had included a subsidiary expedition that explored northern Chile as far as La Paz, Bolivia. During this year it resulted in publication of THE U.S. NAVAL ASTRONOMICAL EXPEDITION TO THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE DURING THE YEARS 1849-’50-’51-’52. The 1st volume covered the geography, resources, history, and political situation of Chile and included a narrative of the overland travels. There was a folding panoramic view of the city of Santiago from the summit of Santa Lucia.

The 2d volume contained reports on natural history subjects plus a narrative of Archibald MacRae’s journey across the Andes and the pampas of the Argentine Provinces. John Cassin’s report on birds contained colored bird plates. Spencer Fullerton Baird submitted reports on general zoology, botany, and paleontology.4 Volumes 1 and 2 would be in the library of Waldo Emerson and would be accessed by Henry Thoreau in about 1858. He would copy details about the natural resources of Chile by Lt. Gilliss, and about South American Indian

4. The 3d volume contained tables of astronomic observations, made at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Santiago, Chile. Volumes 4 and 5 never got published. The 6th volume contained astronomic observations and experiments made in Chile and at other observatories.





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remains by Thomas Ewbank, into his Indian Notebook #10 and his Fact Book.

US NAVAL ASTRO. EXPED., IUS NAVAL ASTRO. EXPED., II




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/55/1855_UnitedStatesNavyI.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/55/1855_UnitedStatesNavyII.pdf


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September 7, Tuesday: A total eclipse of the sun was viewable across South America.5

Samuel Storrow Higginson brought some eggs from Deerfield to show Henry Thoreau “among others apparently that of the Virginia rail”:

September 7: P.M. – To Assabet Bath. I turn Anthony’s corner. It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands ofgrasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxeanarmy of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun; the earth-song of the cricket comes up through all; andever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard. (Poultry is now fattening on grasshoppers.) The dry desertedfields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side on Nature’s palette. You literally wade in yellowflowers knee-deep, and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with AsterTradescanti. [Channing, pages 104, 105.]J. Farmer calls those Rubus sempervirens berries, now abundant, “snake blackberries.”Looking for my Maryland yellow-throat’s nest, I find that apparently a snake has made it the portico to hisdwelling, there being a hole descending into the earth through it!In Shad-bush Meadow the prevailing grasses (not sedges) now are the slender Panicum clandestinum, whoseseeds are generally dropped now, Panicum virgatum, in large tufts, and blue-joint, the last, of course, long sincedone. These are all the grasses that I notice there.What a contrast to sink your head so as to cover your ears with water, and hear only the confused noise of therushing river, and then to raise your ears above water and hear the steady creaking of crickets in the aerialuniverse!While dressing, I see two small hawks, probably partridge hawks, soaring and circling about one hundred feetabove the river. Suddenly one drops down from that height almost perfectly perpendicularly after some prey,till it is lost behind the bushes.Near the little bridge at the foot of Turtle Bank, Eragrostis capillaris in small but dense patches, apparently inprime (the Poa capillaris of Bigelow). What I have thus called in press is E. pectinacea (P. hirsuta of Bigelow).On the flat hill south of Abel Hosmer, Agrostis scabra, hair grass, flyaway grass, tickle grass, out of bloom;branches purplish. That of September 5th was the A. perennans, in lower ground.On the railroad between tracks above Red House, Aristida dichotoma, half a dozen inches high, hardly yet out;

1858

5. This was part of the well understood “Saros cycle 142” which repeats itself, for a series of 72 eclipse events, every 18 years plus 11 days and began with the partial solar eclipse of April 17, 1624. This cycle of 72 regular eclipse events will provide total eclipses somewhere on the face of the earth from July 25, 1786 through October 29, 2543. The longest duration of totality during this regular 72-occurrence series will come on May 28, 2291, when the totality will persist for 6 minutes and 34 seconds. The 72d and final event in the series will be a partial eclipse that will occur, God willing, on June 5, 2904. Lt. James Melville Gilliss of the US Naval Observatory would prepare, in 1859, AN ACCOUNT OF THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN ON SEPTEMBER 7, 1858 (Washington DC).





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forked aristida, or poverty grass.

Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, – among others apparently thatof the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., according to Wilson, and is like (except, perhaps, in form) toone which E. Bartlett brought me a week or ten days ago, which dropped from a load of hay carried to Stow’sbarn! So perhaps it breeds here.6 Also a smaller egg of same form, but dull white with very pale dusky spots,which may be that of the Carolina rail. He had also what I think the egg of the Falco fuscatus,7 it agreeing withMacGillivray’s sparrow hawk’s egg.8

6. Yes. Vide September 9th. Vide September 21st and December 7th, and June 1st, 1859. Vide 18th.7. [Question by Austin Meredith: Does anyone have any idea what this Falco fuscatus might be?]8. William MacGillivray. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GREAT BRITAIN (Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1836).

[This volume found in Thoreau’s personal library is now in Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library.]

RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GB




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/36/1836_WilliamMacGillivray.pdf


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As civil war broke out and Brooklyn’s attention was drawn to the conflict, the Brooklyn Eagle of course began making money hand over fist. There was a Grand Jury inquiry to determine whether several presses including it were guilty of disloyalty, and of encouraging the enemy by urging the North to give in to the demands of the Southrons. The Eagle of course argued indignantly on behalf of its freedoms of speech and of the press. Although it would not be indicted, the US postmaster general would order the New-York postmaster not to accept any more of its newspapers for mailing (from this year until 1884 Thomas Kinsella would be the tenured editor at this newspaper).

Matthew Fontaine Maury, a native of Virginia, handed in his federal commission in order to serve his native state as Chief of Sea Coast, River and Harbor Defences. When Maury resigned, Lt. James Melville Gilliss came to be in charge at the US Naval Observatory (he had previously been responsible merely for obtaining the observatory’s instruments and books).

Benjamin Apthorp Gould got married with Mary Apthorp Quincy, daughter of the Reverend Josiah Quincy. He undertook the task of preparing for publication the records of astronomical observations made at the US Naval Observatory since 1850.

Maury would be sent by the Confederacy to England, Ireland, and France to purchase ships while conducting a propaganda campaign for the South and for peace. He would try desperately through speeches and newspaper articles to get foreign nations to intercede in our fratricidal conflict. Having had experience with the transatlantic cable and electricity flowing through wires underwater while working with Cyrus West Field and Samuel Finley Breese Morse, he put that experience to use by developing an electric “torpedo” (similar to a present-day contact mine) — the Secretary of the Navy would in 1865 acknowledge that his device had “cost the Union more vessels than all other causes combined.”After the surrender, Maury would serve Maximilian in Mexico as “Imperial Commissioner of Immigration” and build the Carlotta and New Virginia Colony for displaced Confederates and immigrants from other lands. He would then accept a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Kentucky, holding the chair of physics, and write on THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF VIRGINIA.

1861

ASTRONOMY





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Matthew Fontaine Maury had long been advocating the creation of an agricultural college that would complement the Virginia Military Institute. However, by the point at which the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College began in Blacksburg, Virginia, Maury had become too elderly to be made its first president.

1872





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February 1, Saturday: Matthew Fontaine Maury had been giving talks in Europe about cooperation on a weather bureau for the continental areas, Land Meteorology as an extension of his lifelong efforts for the charting of the winds and the predicting of storms at sea. He had been delivering these “Weather on Land” speeches until while delivering one on a national lecture tour, he collapsed and needed to return to his home in Lexington, Kentucky. He had commented to his wife Ann Hull Herndon-Maury, “I have come home to die.” On this day he asked his daughters and wife to leave the room and at noon, attended by his eldest son Major Richard Launcelot Maury and his son-in- law Major Spottswood Wellford Corbin, died.

1873





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November: In order to verify the precise difference of longitude between the Paris Observatory and the US Naval Observatory, the Eiffel Tower was pressed into service as a minuscule antenna for wireless radio:

1913





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And that, of course, was just the start:





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Frits Zernicke of the Netherlands described how it might be possible to create a phase-contrast microscope.

The final large telescope was installed at the US Naval Observatory, a 40-incher. This was the 2d and final telescope made by George Ritchey. Unfortunately, there was such light pollution caused by the surrounding metropolis as to severely impair the usefulness of the instrument. Seeking a dark sky, the Observatory would settle upon Flagstaff, Arizona, and relocate the 40-incher to the “Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station.” Operations there would commence in 1955, and in 1964 a 61-incher, the “Kaj Strand Astrometric Reflector,” would be added there.

1934

HISTORY OF OPTICS





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At the Anniversary dinner of the War Resisters League the League Peace Award was presented to Daniel Berrigan by Allen Ginsberg.

A couple of Washington DC’s professional eminence grises, Donald Rumsfeld and his chum Dick Cheney, intent on strengthening rather than weakening the executive branch of the federal government, urged President Gerald Ford to veto the new Freedom of Information Act. (After Congress would override this veto, administration lawyers would create the conceit that such an Act could apply only to paper records, and a determined effort would begin to convert all sensitive government records to a digital form in which they would never need to be divulged to the American voter.)

A house situated in the grounds of the US Naval Observatory, “Number One Observatory Circle,” that once had served as the residence of its superintendent and then had been repurposed as the Washington residence of the Chief of Naval Operations, in this year became the official residence of the Vice President of the United States (supposedly, a secret bunker there would become Vice President Dick Cheney’s hidey-hole after 9/11, although nobody’s supposed to know anything about that sort of stuff).

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1974








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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: November 20, 2014

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST




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Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.


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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.





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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.




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Documents

LT. MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY - Kouroo...Books electronic copy for the 1847 edition from the same publisher (New York: Bartlett & Welford) and have reason to expect this to be equivalent