these essays has been justly ascribed the great reforms then made in the navy, as well as the establishment of a naval academy. He also advocated the establishment of a navy yard at Memphis, Tennessee; which was done by act of Congress. Under his directions were made, at that point, by Lieutenant Marr, the first series of observations upon the flow of the Mississippi. He proposed a system of observations which would enable the observers to give information, by telegraph, as to the state of the river and its tributaries. He advocated the enlargement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, that vessels of war might pass between the gulf and the lakes. He suggested to Congress efficacious plans for the disposition of the drowned government lands along the Mississippi. In the interest of commerce, he brought forward and successfully advocated the "warehousing system.'

In 1842 he was appointed Superintendent of the Depot of Charts and Instruments, at Washington. Up to this time the field in which Maury labored was limited to his own country. Placed in a position which afforded the means necessary to the full employment of his powers, he speedily developed the plans which he had previously cherished and so earnestly advocated. The simple Depot for Charts and Instruments was transformed into an Observatory. Surrounded by such men as Fergusson, Walker, Hubbard, Coffin, Keith, and other faithful workers, whom he inspired with his own enthusiasm, he made the Naval Observatory national in its importance and relations to the astronomical world. This accomplished, he added to those labors of the astronomer, fruitful of results for future years, the task of unraveling the winds and currents of the ocean, and collected from the logbooks of ships of war long stored in the government offices, and from all other accessible sources, the material suited to his purpose. By numerous assistants, it was tabulated, and by him discussed, thus yielding for the guidance of the mariner on a single route, the combined experience of thousands. Yet Maury's first chart to navigators, with his new route, which he was wont to afterwards delightedly call his "Fair Way to Rio," was as first doubted and declined as being opposite to all previous tending, but its accuracy being triumphantly demonstrated by Captain Jackson, commanding the W. H. D. Č. Wright, of Baltimore, the maratime world hastened to acknowledge the beneficence conferred, and to contribute aid to the speedy and complete application of Maury's system to all seas.

Maury also instituted the system of deep-sea sounding, rendering easy of accomplishment all operations of that character since undertaken, and leading directly to the establishment of telegraphic communication between the continents by cable, on the bed of the ocean. In these labors he was effectively assisted by Colonel John M. Brooke (now a professor in the Virginia Military Institute), then on duty in the Naval Observatory, and whose deep-sea sounding apparatus first brought up specimens, whilst it fathomed the depths of the ocean.

But to these immediately practical and beneficial results there was something to be added. The investigations, of which they were the first fruits, presented materials for a work to make clear to landsmen as well as mariners, the wonderful mechanism of the sea, with its currents and its atmosphere, "The Physical Geography of the Sea," which, translated into various languages, is an enduring monument to the genius and usefulness of its author. By Humboldt, Maury was declared to be the founder of a new and important science. principal powers of Europe recognized the value of his services to mankind. France, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, Holland, Bremen, and the Papal States, bestowed orders of knighthood and other honors. The Academies of Science of Paris, Berlin, Brussels, St. Petersburg and Mexico conferred the honor of membership.

The

When Virginia, seceding from the Union, called upon her sons, he promptly resigned from the Federal Navy to take part in the defense of his native State, declining, from a sense of duty, highly honorable positions, which he was invited to fill in Russia and France severally. He was selected as one of the Council of Three appointed by the Governor of Virginia in the important crisis, and so served until its army and navy were incorporated with those of the Confederacy, when he was sent abroad by the Southern Government, invested with suitable powers of provision for its material naval wants. This trust he duly

filled until the close of the war.

Then, in anticipation of a large emigration from the Southern States to Mexico, with the view of aiding his countrymen there, he went thither. He was cordially received by the Emperor Maximilian, who appointed him to a place in his Cabinet. Thence he was sent on a special mission to Europe. The revolution terminating his relations with Mexico, he was left in straitened circumstances, when he resumed, as a means of support, his scientific and literary labors. He made experimental researches in new application of electricity, in which he was eminently successful, and prepared his Manual of Geography, subsequently published in America. During this period the University of Cambridge conferred on him the degree of LL.D.; and the Emperor of the French invited him to the superintendency of the Imperial Observatory at Paris. He patriotically preferred to accept the chair of Physics in the Virginia Military Institute. Whilst serving here, he prepared his latest work, the Physical Survey of Virginia. Stricken with a gastric complaint in October, 1872, he died at Lexington, Virginia, February 1, 1873. His remains rest beneath a monument of native James river granite in Hollywood Cemetery, near Richmond. Commodore Maury married in early life, Anne, daughter of Dabney and Elizabeth Herndon, of Fredericksburg, Virginia (the sister of a devotedly heroic brotherhood). Their issue was five daughters and three sons.

HISTORY OF VIRGINIA.

INTRODUCTORY.

In the study of the history of a commonwealth, be it empire, state or kingdom, it is necessary that we understand something of the causes which have acted in producing and advancing, or destroying and retarding, the various institutions-civil and otherwise-of that particular commonwealth. Then, in order that the history of Virginia be properly understood, it is essential that we examine the causes which led to its settlement and organization as a State.

In the year 1492 Christopher Columbus lifted the veil which hung over the stormy waters of the Atlantic, and exposed the American continent to the view of Western Europe. This was the first practical discovery of America. That the continent was seen by white men as early as the tenth century, there can no longer remain a doubt. The examination of Icelandic records and documents preserved in the archives of the Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, by recent historians, put at rest the long-doubted claim that the Northmen were the first discoverers of America. Even so great an authority as Humboldt says, after having examined the records, "The discovery of the northern part of America by the Northmen can not be disputed."

A Norse navigator, in the year 986 A. D., while sailing in the Greenland sea, was caught in a storm and carried westward to the coast of Labrador. Several times the shore was sighted, but no landing attempted. The shore was so different from the well-known coast of Greenland that it was certain that an unknown land was in sight. Upon reaching Greenland Herjulfson, the commander, and his companions told strange stories of the new land seen in the west.

In the year 1001 the actual discovery of the continent was made by Lief Ericson, who sailed west from Greenland, and landed on the coast of America in 41° north latitude. It was the spring of the year, and from the luxuriant vegetation that everywhere adorned the coast the Northmen named it Vineland (the land of vines). These adventurers on the deep continued to visit these shores during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries; it was as late as A. D. 1347, that the last voyage of the Northmen to America was made. Says Ridpath: "An event is to be

weighed by its consequences. From the discovery of the western world by the Norsemen nothing whatever resulted. The Icelanders themselves forgot the place and the very name of Vineland." Europe never heard of such a land or such a discovery. The curtain was again stretched from sky to sea, and the New World lay hidden in its shadows.

He that was to announce to Europe the existence of the American continent was to come from the classic land of Italy, and the sunny land of Spain, the country under whose patronage the discovery was to be made. Christopher Columbus was the name of him whose discoveries, considered in all their bearings upon human history, are the grandest recorded in the annals of the world. A name around which, as time rolls away, will gather the wreaths of imperishable fame.

No sooner had the existence of a trans-Atlantic continent been made known than all nations from Scandinavia to the Strait of Gibraltar became frenzied with excitement. A new world, as it were, was to be added to the old. Monarchs, discoverers and adventurers at once rushed forward in quest of the "Eldorado" to be found somewhere beyond the west

ern seas.

Spain at once prepared for the conquest of her newly acquired possessions, and with a series of splendid triumphs in the south, the civilization of the Incas and Montezumas perished from the earth. France was not slow to profit by the discoveries of Columbus. Far away, hundreds of miles toward the Arctic Circle, she took possession of the country lying along the St. Lawrence and around Lake Champlain, and hastened to plant colonies in the same. Between the Spanish possessions on the south and those of France on the north, lay a territory extending from the thirty-fourth to sixty-eighth parallels of north latitude, and from the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west. England laid claim to all this region, and based that claim upon the discoveries of John and Sebastian Cabot, who were the first to explore the eastern coast of America, they having sailed from Salvador to the Capes of Virginia as early as the year 1498. Nearly an hundred years had passed away, and no permanent settlement had been made in all this vast domain. From the everglades of Florida to the pine-clad hills of Nova Scotia, no white man had ever landed on these shores. It was in the year 1583 that a young nobleman, whose life and tragic death were to become familiar to every student of English history, first appeared at the English court-it was none other than Sir Walter Raleigh, an English gallant, who had taken part in the French Protestant wars, and who now appeared at the British court to make application for assistance in fitting out an expedition for the purpose of planting a colony in North America. He hoped thus to prevent the Spanish monarchy and the equally intolerant French court from gaining possession of the entire continent to the exclusion of England and her interests. Queen Elizabeth was then upon the British throne. Raleigh