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B P I '>1 ■.^ LyelVs First Vis^t to North America^ TRAVELS nr NORTH AMERICA, CANADA, AND NOVA SCOTIA. WITB (Sfeological (f^bsetbatfons. ^i^ BY SIR CHARLES LYELL, F.R.S. AUTHOR OF *'PRINCIPLB8 OP OBOLOOY," '*7aNUAL OF BLBMENTARY QBOLOGY," BTC. IN TWO VOLUMES. — VOL. L L9-h SECOND EDITION. 185-5" V. 1 LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. * 1855. ■ Al f '4 f p^^ i.liftu kt. « \l Lf.ii^r.7fi'r> O'/fmSi 3TRD3-E:YE YIEW CF TBE falls of NL\(;AHA < AD-JA^ ,(-1 , •'-■J^. •'■.■.a-'- 7** :'x.i.v 'f'^^" : f . O'/fCf/strrrr/ NIA(;ARA ^ i^D-:AC£:IT COTI_MTPT. J)jmS\) GEOLOGfCALlY. o^ DnvziJs I)a\ i lilp;}).*- liif- *■; •iiHyii-ji. By the same Author, A SECOND VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES, 1815-f). Third Edition. 2 vols. Post 8vo. 12«. A MANUAL OF ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY ; or, the Ancient Chances of the Eaktii and its Inhabitants, as illustrated by its Geological Monuments. Fifth Edition. With 750 Woodcuts. 8vo. PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY; or, the Modern Changes of the Eautu and its Inuaditants, as illustrative of Geology. Ninth Edition. With Woodcuts. 8vo. 18». London : A. and G. A. Spottiswoodb, New-Street-Square. TO GEORGE TICKNOR, ESQ. OP BOSIOX, MASSACHUSETTS. STATES, Y ; or, the IS ilUistratpd Woodcuts. N Changes logy. Ninth My dear Mr. Ticknor, I am glad to have your permission to dedicate these volumes to you, in remembrance I of the many happy days spent in your society, and in that of your family and literary friends at Boston ; a remembrance Avhich would be without alloy, were it not for my frequent regrets that the broad Atlantic should separate so many congenial souls whom we br-th of us number among our friends in Europe and America. Believe me, With feelings of great regard, Ever faithfully yours, Charles Eyell. London, June 12. 184o. M • — vj i ura*— T"-- ■ •*• PllEFACE. The reader is reminded that the general map of the geology of the United States and Canada forms the frontispiece of the second volume, and that the line of my route is traced upon it in the manner de- scribed in the explanation of the map at Vol. 11. p. 238. As the present work embraces a great variety of subjects to which my thoughts were turned during my travels in North America, I have endeavoured to confine myself as far as possible to the communica- tion of such scientific matter as I thought might be of interest to the general reader. For a more de- tailed account of my geological observations alluded to in the course of these volumes, I must refer to the following published papers and abstracts of memoirs read to the Geological Society of London. 1. Letter to Dr. Fitton on the Blossberg Coal District and Stigmaria: Proceedings of the Geological Society y vol. iii. p. 554. 1841. 't ?1 riiKTACE. 2. Recession of tlie Falls of Niagara : Ih'ul. vol. ill. p. a9.5. 1842. licsiimctl, vol. iv, p. 10. 1843. 3. Tertlaiy Formations In Virginia and other parts of the United States : Ihid. vol. ill. [). 735. 1842. 4. Fossil Foot-Prints of I5irds and Ini^jrcsslons of Kaln-drops in Cc^nnectlent A'alley. Ihid. vol. iii. p. 793. 1842. 5. Tertiary Strata of jNIartha's Vineyard in Massachusetts: IJt'ul. vol. Iv. p. 31. 1843. 6. On the Geolocrical Po*»Ition of the Mastodon gifl^nitcus, and other Keniains at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, and other Localities In the United States. Jhid. vol. iv. p. 36. 1843. 7. On upright Fossil Trees found in the Coal Strataof Cumberland, Nova Scotia; Stllinum's Journal, vol. xlv. Xo. 2. p. 353. 1843. 8. Coal Formations, Gypsum, and ^larinc Lime- stones of Nova Scotia : Ibid. p. 356. 9. Bed of Plumbago and Anthracite in Mica- schist, near AVorcester, Massachusetts, with Appendix containing Analyses by Dr. Percy : Quarterly Journ. of Geol. Soc, No. 2. p. 416. May, 1845. 10. Cretaceous Strata of New Jersey, with Ap- pendix, on the Fossil Corals of the same, by Mr. Lonsdale: Ibid. No. 1. p. 301. Feb. 1845- # PREFACE. vii : Ibid. vol. . iv. p. ID. and other . vol. iii. p. fiuprefjsion:^ llcv. Ilnd, ineyard in . 1843. 3 Mastodon Big Bone itictj in the ;6. 1843. n tlie Coal ; SilUnuins 143. irine Limc- )6. 3 in Mica- isetts, with Dr. Percy : ». 2. p. 416. 11. Miocene Formations of Virginia and North Carolina, &c., with Appendix, on Fossil Corals, by INIr. Lonsdale : read to the Geol. Soc, March, 184.5. Preparing for publication, Ibid. No. 4. 12. On the AVhitc Limestone of South Carolina and Georgia, and the Eocene Strata of other parts of tlie U. S., witli Appendix, on the Corals, by Mr. Lonsdale : read to the Geol. Soc, INIarch, 1845. Preparing for publi- cation, Ibid. No. 4. Abstracts of most of these papers have also ap- peared in Silliman's " American Journal of Science and Arts," for the corresponding years. London, June 14tli, 1845. ', with Ap- e same, by Feb. 1845- I 1 i'm \ V( Di (KM**!*-***- - g .g. ' j.L ■ M .wn.i. iM Liw CONTENTS or THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER I. Voyage. — Harbour of Halifax. — Excursions near Boston. — Difference of Plants from European Species, and Correspond- ence of Marine Shells. — Hesemblance of Drift, Erratics, and furrowed Rocks, to those of Sweden. — Springfield. — New- haven. — Scenery of the Hudson. — Albany. — Geological Surveys. — Mohawk Valley. — Ancient or Silurian Form- ations. — Prosperity and rapid Progress of the People. — Lake Ontario. — Tortoises. — Fossil remains of Mas- todon --«--- Page 1 CHAPTER II. Distant and near View of the Falls of Niagara. — Whether the Falls have receded from Queenston to their present Site. — Geographical Features of the Region. — Course of the River abov3 and below the Falls. — Recent Proofs of Erosion. — Historical Data in the Works of Hennepin and Kalm. — , Geo- logical Evidence derived from Fluviatile Strata or Remnants of an old River-bed in Goat Island and elsewhere. — Diffi- culty of computing the Rate of the retrograde Movement. — Varying Hardness and Thickness of the Rocks undermined. — Future Recession. — Age of the Drift and Limestone Escarp- ments. — Successive Changes which preceded and accompanied the Origin of the Falls. — Reflections on the Lapse of past Time -..«•« 27 rt- r CONTENTS. CIIArTER ITT. Tour from the Niagara to the Northern Frontier of Pennsyl- vania. — Ancient Gypsiferous Formation of New York. — Fossil Mastodon at Geneseo. — Scenery. — Sudden Growth of New Towns. — Coal of Blossberg, and Resemblance to British Coal Measures. — Stigmaria. — Humming Birds. — Nomenclature of Places. — Ilelderberg IVIountains and Fossils. Refractory Tenants. — Travelling in the States. — Politeness to "Women. — Canal-boat. — Domestic Service. — Progress of Civilisation. — Philadelphia. -Fire-engines Page 54 *.*»» CHAPTER IV. Excursion to New Jersey. — Cretaceous Rocks compared to European. — General Analogy of Fossils, and Distinctness of Species. — Tour to the Anthracite Region of the AUeghanios in Pennsylvania. — Long Parallel Ridges and Valleys of these Mountains. — Pottsville. — Absence of Smoke. — Fossil Plants same as in Bituminous Coal. — Stijimaria). — Great thickness of Strata. — Origin of Anthracite. — Vast Area of the Ap- palachian Coal-field. — Progressive Debituminization of Coal from West to East. — General Remarks on the different Groups of Rocks between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. — Law of Structure of the Ap{)alachian Chain discovered by the Pro- fessors Rogers. — Increased folding and dislocation of Strata on the south-eastern Flank of the Appalachians. — Theory of the Origin of this Mountain Chain CHAPTER V 77 Wooded Ridges of the Alleghany Mountains. — German Patois in Pennsylvania. — Lehigh Summit ^line. — Effects of Ice during a Flood on the Delaware. — Election of a Governor at Trenton and at Philadelphia. — Journey to Boston. — Au- tumnal Tints of the Foliage. — Boston the Scat of Commerce» of Government, and of a University. — Lectures at the Lowell Institute. — Influence of Oral Instruction in Literature and i CONTENTS. XI titior of Ponnsyl- f New York. — Sudden Growth Resemblance to inmlnjj Birds. — itains and Fossils, ates. — Politeness ice. — Progress of Page 54 cks compared to I Distinctness of he Alleghanies in Valleys of these e. — Fossil Plants -Great thickness A.rea of the Ap- linization of Coal 3 different Groups jissippi. — Law of ered by the Pro- location of Strata ians. — Theory of 77 — German Patois — Eifects of Ice of a Governor at Boston. — Au- cat of Commerce) ires at the Lowell in Literature and Science. — Fees of Public Lecturers. — Educational Funds sunk in costly Buildings. — Advantages of Anti-building Clauses . — Blind Asylum. — Lowell Factories. — National Schools. — Ecjuality of Sects. — Society in Boston Page 101 CHAPTER VI. Fall of Snow and Sleigh-driving at Boston. — Journey to New- haven, — Ichthyolites of Durham, Connecticut. — Age of Red Sandstone. — Income of Farmers. — Baltimore. — Washington. — National Museum. — Natural impediments to the growth of Washington. — WHiy chosen for the Capital. — Richmond, Virginia. — Eflects of Slave-labour. — Loav Region on the Atlantic Border, occupied by Tertiary Strata. — Infusorial Bed at Richmond. — Miocene Shells and Corals in the Cliffs of the James River compared with Fossils of the European Crag and Faluns. — Analogy of Forms and difference of Species. — Proportion of Species. — Commencement of the present Geographical Distribution of Mollusca. - 124 CHAPTER VIL Pine Barrens of Virginia and North Carolina. — Railway Train stopped by Snow and Ice. — The Great Dismal Swamp. — Soil formed entirely of Vegetable Matter. — Rises higher than the contiguous firm Land. — Buried Timber. — Lake the Middle.— The Origin of Coal illustrated by the in Great Dismal. — Objections to the Theory of an ancient Atmosphere highly charged with Carbonic Acid - 140 CHAPTER VIII. Tour to Charleston, South Carolina. — Facilities of Locomotion. — Augusta. — Voyage down the Savannah River. — Shell Bluff. — Slave-labour. — Fever and Ague. — Millhaven. — Pine Forests of Georgia. — Alligators and Land-Tortoises. — Warmth of Climate in January. — Tertiary Strata on the Savannah. — Fossil Remains of IVIastodon and IMylodon near Savannah. — Passports required of Slaves. — Cheerfulness of the Negroes - - - - - 153 :v9 xu 1^^ =f IjJ, KM ; t ,' r- /' rv'' I:' ' CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. Return to Charleston. — Fossil Human Skeleton. — Geographical Distribution of Quadrupeds in North America. — Severe Frost in 1835 in South Carolina. — White Limestone of the Cooper River and Santee Canal. — Referred to the Eocene Period, and not intermediate between Tertiary and Chalk. — Lime- sinks. — Species of Shells common to Eocene Strata in America and Europe. — Causes of the increased Insalubrity of the Low Region of South Carolina. — Condition of the Slave Population. — Cheerfulness of the Negroes : their Vanity. — State of Animal Existence. — Invalidity of Marriages. — The Coloured Popula- tion multiply faster than the Whites. — Effects of the inter- ference of Abolitionists. — Laws against Education. — Gradual Emancipation equally desirable for the Whites and the Coloured Race - Page 171 CHAPTER X. Wilmington, N. C. — Mount Vernon. — Return to Philadelphia. — Reception of Mr. Dickens. — Museum and Fossil Human Bones. — Penitentiary. — Churches. — Religious Excitement. — Coloured People of Fortune. — Obstacles to their obtaining political and social Equality. — No natural Antipathy between the Races. — Negro Reservations - - 196 CHAPTER XL Philadelphia. — Financial Crisis. — Payment of State Dividends suspended. — General Distress and private Losses of the Ame- ricans. — Debt of Pennsylvania. — Public Works. — Direct Taxes. — Deficient Revenue. — Bad Faith and Confiscation. — Irresponsible Executive. — Loan refused by European Capi- talists in 1842. — Good Faith of Congress during the War o^ 1812-14. — Effects of Universal Suffrage. — Fradulent voting" — Aliens. — Solvency and Good Faith of the Majority of the States. — Confidence of American Capitalists. — Reform of the Electoral Body. — General Progress of Society, and Pro- spects of the Republic - - - - 215 CONTENTS. Xlll 1. — Geographical a. — Severe Frost 3ne of the Cooper le Eocene Period, i Chalk. — Lime- Strata in America ubrity of the Low Slave Population . — State of Animal Coloured Popula- ects of the inter- cation. — Gradual Whites and the - Page 171 n to Philadelphia, tid Fossil Human pous Excitement, to their obtaining LUtipathy between 196 f State Dividends osses of the Ame- Works. — Direct id Confiscation. — y European Capi- uring the War o' Fradulent voting" le Majority of the ists. — Reform of Society, and Pro- 215 CHAPTER XII. New York City. — Geology. — Distribution of Erratic Blocks in Long Island. — Residence in New York. — Effects on Society of increased Intercourse of distant States. — Separation of the Capital and Metropolis. — Climate. — Geology of the Taconic Mountains. — Stratum of Plumbago and Anthracite in the Mica Schist of Worcester. — Theory of its Origin. — Lectures for the Working Classes. — Fossil Foot-prints of Birds in Red Sandstone. — Mount Holyoke. — Visit to the Island of Martha's Vineyard. — Fossil Walrus. — Indians. - - Page 238 CHAPTER Xni. Meeting of Association of American Geologists at Boston. — Popular Libraries in New England. — Large Sale of Literary Works in the United States. — American Universities. — Harvard College, near Boston. — English Universities. — Pe- culiarities of their System. — Historical Sketch of the Causes of these Peculiarities not of ^Medieval Origin. — Collegiate Corpo- rations. — Their altered Relation to the English Universities after the Reformation. — Constitution given to Oxford by Leicester and Laud. — System of Public Teaching, how super- seded by the Collegiate. — Effects of the Change. — Oxford Examination Statute of 1800. — Its subsequent Modifica- tion and Results. — Rise of Private Tutors at Oxford and Cam- bridge — Consequences of this Innovation. — Struggle at Oxford in 1839 to restore the Professorial System. — Causes of its Rejection. — Tractarianism. — Supremacy of Eccle- siastics. — Youthful Examiners. — Cambridge. — Advocacy of the System followed there. — Influence of the English Academical Plan on the Culti«'ation of the Physical Sciences, and all branches of Progressive Knowledge. — Remedies and Reforms -----. 261 Tlai Ad Plat Plat Lo for w LIST OF PLATES AND MAPS, AND DIRECTIONS TO BINDER. VOL. I. Plate I. Bird's-cyc View of the Falls of Niagara and Adjacent Country, coloured geologically. Frontispiece to Vol. T. Plate III. Map of the Niagara District. To face Vol. I. p. QQ. Plate IV. Fac-simile of a View of Niagara Falls, by Father Louis Hennepin. — (From the original Utrecht edition, 1697.) Page 35. Plate V. Fossil Mammalian Remains from the Tertiary Strata of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Page 258. VOL. IL Plate II. Geological Map of the United States, Canada, &c., compiled from the State Surveys of the U. S., and other sources. Frontispiece to Vol. II. Plate VI. View of the Great Coal Seam on the Mononaghela at BroAvnsville, Pennsylvania. TofaceVol. II. p. 27. Plate VII. Recent Foot-prints of Birds, the Sandpiper (Tringa minuta), on the Red Mud of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia — natural size. To face Vol. IL p, IQS, JTor the Description of the Plates and Maps, see Vol. IL p. 235. '■'t. I' f \ jli \ . •'f TC I %'>■ ^'4 m I I Voyngi mce furn kavei Surv ation Oiita ■> » U i % ' i U.S., course in Ire betwee Aft( sea» w< -.si ! f JOURNAL or A TOUR IN NORTH AMERICA, IN 1841-2. CHAPTER 1/ Voynge. — Harbour of Halifax. — Excursions near Boston. — Difference of Plants from European Species^ and Correspond- tnce of Marine Shells. — Resemblance of Drift, Erratics, and fnrroived liochs, to those of Siveden. — Springfield. — Neiv- kaven. — Scenery of the Hudson. — Albany. — Geological ; Surveys. — Mohaick Valley. — Ancient or Sihirian Form- ations. — Prosperity and rapid Progress of the People. — Lake Ontai'io. — Tortoises. — Fossil Remains of Mastodon. July 20. 1841. — Sailed from Liverpool for Boston, U. S., in the steam-ship Acadia, which held her course as straight as an arrow from Cape Clear in Ireland to Halifax in Nova Scotia, making between 220 and 280 miles per day. After the monotony of a week spent on the open sea. we were amused when we came near the great B VOYAGE. Chap. I. Cil banks which extend from the southern point of Newfouncllancl, by the ra])id pass^age of the steamer through alternate belts of stationary fog and clear spaces warmed and lighted up with bright sunshine. Looking at the dense fog from the intermediate sunny regions, we could hardly be persuaded that we were not beholding land, so distinct and well- defined was its outline, and such the varieties of Hjrht and shade, that some of our Canadian fellow- passengers compared it to the patches of cleared and uncleared country t)n the north shore of the St. Law- rence. These fogs arc caused by the meeting, over the great banks, of the warm waters of the gulf stream flowing from the south, and colder currents, often charged with floating ice, from the north, by which very opposite states in the relative temperature of the sea and atmosphere are produced in spaces closely contiguous. In places where the sea is warmer than the air, fogs are generated. AVhen the eye has been accustomed for many days to the deep blue of the central Atlantic, the greener tint of the sea over the banks is refreshing. AVe were within 150 miles of tlie southern point of Newfoundland when we crossed these banks, over which the shallowest water is said to be about thirty-five fathoms deep. The bottom consists of fine sand, which must be often ploughed up by ice- T| cr| bi Jj F ai i ' Chap. I. HARBOUR OF HALIFAX. bergs, for several of them were seen aground here by some of our passengers on the 31st of July last. The captain tells us that the worst months for crossnig the Atlantic to and from Halifax are Fe- bruary and March, and the most agreeable ones, July, August, and September. Tlie nearer we ap- proached the American coast, the more beautiful and brilliant were the sunsets. We sometimes com- pared the changing hues of the clouds and sky to the blue and red colours in a pigeon's neck. July 31. — On the eleventh day of our voyage we sailed directly into the harbour of Halifax, which by its low hills of granite and slate, covered with birch and spruce fir, reminded me more of a Norwegian fiord, such as that of Christiania, than any other place I had seen. I landed here for six hours, with my wife, during which we had time to drive about the town, and see the museum, where I was shown a large fossil tree filled with sandstone, recently sent from strata containing coal in the interior. I re- solved to examine these before returning to England, as they appeared, by the description given us, to aft'ord the finest examples yet known in the world of petrified trees occurring in their natural or erect position. Letters, which we had written on the voyage, being now committed to the post-office at Halifax, B 2 ' r'l 1 \ ' I ■\\ if' I) If AKUIVAL AT BOf^TOX. CnAP. I. were taken up next day hy the Calc(loni»a steam-ship for England, and in less than a month from the time of our quitting: London, our friends in remote parts of great Britain (in Scotland and in Devonshire) were reading an account of the harbour of Halifax, of the Micmac Indians with their Esfiuimaux features, paddling about in canoes of birch bark, and other novelties seen on the shores of the New World. It required the aid of the recently established railroads at home, as well as the Atlantic steam-packets, to render such rapid correspondence possible. August 2. — A run of about thirty hours carried us to Boston, which we reached in twelve and a half days after leaving Liverpool. The heat here is intense, the harbour and city beautiful, the air clear and entirely free from smoke, so that the shipping may be seen far off, at the end of many of the streets. The Tremont Hotel merits its reputation as one of the best in the world. KecoUecting the contrast of every thing French when I first crossed the straits of Dover, I am astonished, after having traversed the wide ocean, at the resefnblance of every thing I see and hear to things familiar at home. It has so often happened to me in our own island, without travelling into those parts of Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, where they talk a perPectly distinct language, to encounter provincial dialects which it is difficult to comprehend. C tH III nl t Chap. I. EXCURSIONS NEAK BOSTOX. that I wonder at findinj^ the people here so very English. It' the metropolis of New England be a type of a large part of the United States, the industry of Sam Slick, and other writers, in collect- ing together so many diverting Amerl 'danisms Jind so much original slang, is truly great, or their inven- tive powers still greater. I made excursions to the neighbourhood of Boston through Roxbury, Cambridge, and other places, with a good botanist, to whom I had brought letters of introduction. Although this is not the best season for wild flowers, the entire distinctness of the trees, shrubs, and plants, from those on the other side of the Atlantic, affords a constant charm to the Euro- pean traveller. AYe admired the drooping American elm, a picturesque tree; and saw several kinds of sumach, oaks witJi deeply indented leaves, dwarf birches, and several wild roses. Large commons without heaths reminded me of the singular fact that no species of heath is indigenous on the American continent. We missed also the small " crimson- tipped" daisy on the green lawns, and were told that they have been often cultivated with care, but are found to wither when exposed to the dry air and bright sun of this climate. When weeds so common with us cannot be reared here, we cease to wonder at the dissimilarity of the native flora of the New B 3 ^'^^ ?# flM \i tm ' M if * r 6 MAllINE shells: Chap. I. i ■ h World. Yet whenever the aboriginal forests are cleared, we see orchards, gardens, and arable lands, filled with the same fruit trees, the same grain and vegetables, as in Europe, so bountifully has Nature provided that the plants most useful to man should be capable, like himself, of becoming cosmopolites. Aiiff. 5. — Went by railway to deliver letters and pay some visits at Nahant, situated on a promontory of the coast, about ten miles N.E. of Boston, where I examined the rocks of hornblende and syenite, traversed by veins of greenstone and basalt which often intersect *jach other. The surfjice of the rocks, wherever the incumbent gravel or drift has been recently removed, is polished, furrowed, and striated, as in tlie north of Europe, especially in Sweden, or in Switzerland, near the great glaciers. On the beach or bar of sand and shingle, which unites the peninsula with the main land, I collected many recent shells, and was immediately struck with the agreement of several of the most abundant species with our ordinary British littoral shells. Among them were Purpura lapillus, Turbo {lAtto- rina) rudis, 3ff/tilus ednlis, Modiola pajmana, Mya arenaria, besides others which were evidently geo- graphical representatives of our common species; such as Naasa trivittafa, allied to our N. reticulata, Turbo palUatus Say, allied to, if not the same as, our tl o| AP. I. Chap. I. IDENTITY WITH BRITISH SPECIES. 7 common Turbo neritoides, &c. I afterwards added largely to the list of corresponding species and forms, and Dr. Gould of Boston showed me his collection of the marine shells of Massachusetts and the adjoining ocean, and gave me a list of 70 out of 197 species which he regarded as identical with shells from Europe. After comparing these on my return, with the aid of several able conchologists, I am convinced that the greater part of these identifications arc correct ; and, in the place of some considered as doubt- ful, there arc others not enumerated in Dr. Gould's catalogue, which may be substituted, so as to es- tablish a result for which few geologists were pre- pared, viz. that one third, or about 35 per cent, of the marine shells of this part of America are the same as those of the ojiposite side of the Atlantic ; a large part of the remainder consisting of geograj)hical representatives, and a fraction only of the whole affording characteristic or j^eculiar forms. I shall have many opportunities of pointing out the geo- logical bearing of this curious, and to me very un- expected, fact. Several excavations made for railways in the neighbourhood of Boston, through mounds of stra- tified and unstratified gravel and sand, and also through rock, enabled me to recognise the exact resemblance of this part of New England to the less B 4 i 'i ;l • i ii I 8 RESEMBLANCE OF DRIFT ROCKS Chap. I. if i I i elevated regions of Norway and Sweden, where granitic rocks are strewed over irreg-ularly wdth sand and blocks of stone, forming a gently undulating country with numerous ponds and small lakes. Indeed, had I not been constantly reminded that I WHS in America, by the distinctness of the plants, and the birds flying about in the woods, the geo- logical ])hcnomena would have led me to suppose myself in Scotland, or some otlier part of Northern Europe. These heaps of sand and pebbles are entirely devoid of shells or organic remains, and occasionally huge rounded blocks, brought from a great distance, rest upon them, or are buried in them. The heaps are mainly composed, however, of tlie materials of neighbouring rocks. At some points the superficial gravel has been pierced to the depth of 100, and even more than 200, feet, without the solid rock being reached ; but more commonly the loose detritus is of moderate thickness, and, when removed, a polished surface of granite, gneiss, or mica schist, is exposed, exhibiting a smooth surface, with occasional scratches or straight parallel furrows. Here and there, rounded and flattened domes of smoothed rock, similar in shape to the ''roches mouton- noos " which border the Alpine glaciers, are observable. The dav after I landed, an excavation recentlv made for tlie monument now erecting on Bunker's Hill, Chap. I. TO THOSE OF SWEDEN. 9 enabled me to recognise the likeness of this drift to that of Scandinavia, and every day since I have seen fresh proofs of the complete correspondence of these remote districts. Professor Hitchcock has shown that in New England the parallel grooves or furrows have a general direction nearly north and south, but usually ten or fifteen degrees to the west of north. I have already seen, at Nahant and else- where, some marked deviations from this rule, which, however, is correct in the main, and these markings have been found to prevail at all heights in New England, even in mountains more than 2000 feet high. I have already observed several rounded boulders with one flat side scratched and furrowed, as if it had been held firmly in one position when frozen into ice, and rubbed against a hard rocky bottom. There is here, as in Sweden, so great an extent of low country remote from any high mountains, that we cannot attribute the effects above described to true glaciers descending in the open air from the higher regions to the plains. If we adopt the glacial theory, wc must suppose the country to have been submerged, and that the northern drift was brouglit here Ijy large bodies of floating ice, which, by re- peatedly running aground on the bottom of the sea B 5 t : iiP' 10 DEPARTURE FOR NEWIIAVEN. Chap. I. J'\ I. for tliousancls of years, and forcing along the sand under their enormous weight, polished and furrowed the rocky bottom, and on the melting of the ice, let fall their burden of stones or erratic blocks, together with mud and pebbles. When we recollect that Boston is situated in the latitude of Rome, or in that of the north of Spain, and that the northern drift and erratic blocks in Euro]ie arc first met with about the 50th degree of latitude, and then increase as we travel towards the pole; there seems ground for presuming, that the greater cold w^hich now marks the climate of North America had begun to prevail long before the pre- sent distribution of land and sea in the northern hemisphere, and before the present climates were established. Perhaps, even in the glacial period of geology, the lines of equal winter's cold, when drawn from Europe to North America, made a curve of about 10° to the southward, as in our own times. Auff. 9. — After a Aveek spent very agreeably at Boston, we started for Newhaven in Connecticut, going the first hundred miles on an excellent railway in three hours and a half, for three dollars each. The speed of the railways in this State, the most populous in the Union, is far greater than elsewhere, and I am told that they are made with American capital, and for the most part pay good interest. There are .i r I' • I. Chap. I. SPRINGFIELD. 11 I no tunnels, and so few embankments that they afford the traveller a good view of the country. The number of small lakes and ponds, such as are seen in the country between Lund and Stockholm, in Swe- den, affords a pleasing variety to the scenery, and they are as useful as they are ornamental. The water is beautifully clear, and when frozen to the depth of many feet in winter, supplies those large cubical masses of ice, which are sawed and trans- ported to the principal cities throughout the Union, and even shipped to Calcutta, crossing the equator twice in their outward voyage. It has been truly said, that this part of New England owes its wealth to its industry, the soil being sterile, the timber small, and there being no staple commodities of native growth, except ice and granite. In the inland country between Boston and Spring- field, we saw some sand-hills like the dunes of blown sand near the coast, which were probably formed on the sea-side before the country was elevated to its present height. We passed many fields of maize, or Indian corn, before arriving at Springfield, which is a beautiful village, with fine avenues of the American elm on each side of the wide streets. From Spring- field we descended the river Connecticut in a steam- boat. Its banks were covered with an elegant species of golden rod ( SoUdago), with its showy bright yellow 1 i f IIP at r \ 1 B 6 12 NEWIIAVEN. Chap. I. if* flowers. I have been hitherto disappointed in seeing no large timber, and I am told that it was cut down originally in New England without mercy, because it served as an ambush for the Indians, since which time it has never recovered, being consumed largely for fuel. The Americans of these Eastern States who visit Europe have, strange to say, derived their ideas of noble trees more from those of our principal English parks, than from the native forests of the New World. I visited Rocky Hill, near Hartford in Connec- ticut, where the contact is seen of a large mass of columnar trap with red sandstone. In a large quarry, the distinct joints which divide the sandstone con- trast finely with the divisional planes which separate the basalt into pillars. The evidence of alteration by heat at the point of contact is very marked, and has been well described by Dr. Silliman in a paper on the rocks of this place. The town of Newhaven, with a population of 21,000 souls, possesses, like Springfield, fine avenues of trees in its streets, which mingle agreeably with the buildings of the university, and the numerous churches, of which we counted more than twenty steeples. When attending service, according to the Presbyterian form, in the College chapel on Sunday, I could scarcely believe I was not in Scotland. g tl c ll y s r S Chap. I. NEWHAVEN. 13 In an expedition to the north of the town, accom- panied by Professor Silliman, his son, and Mr. Per- cival, a geologist to whom the execution of the State Survey of Connecticut was entrusted, I examined the red sandstone {^New Red) and intrusive volcanic rocks (basalt and greenstone) of this neighbourhood. Dykes of various sizes intersect the stratified rocks, and occasionally flow in great tabular masses nearly parallel to the strata, so as to have the picturesque effect of cappings of columnar basalt, although Mr. Percival has shown that they are in reality intrusive, and alter the strata in contact both above and below. The East and West Kocks near Newhaven, crowned with trap, bear a strong resemblance in their outline and general aspect to Salisbury Crags, and other hills of the same structure near Edinburgh. We saw in Hampden parish, lat. 41° 19', on the summit of a high hill of sandstone, a huge erratic block of greenstone, 100 feet in circumference, and projecting 1 1 feet above ground. Other large trans- ported fragments ^ave been met with more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, and every where straight parallel furrows appear on the smooth surface of the rocks, where the superficial gravel and sand are removed. In a garden at Newhaven (August 13.) I saw, for the first time, a humming bird on the wing. It was f Hi' 1 :: 14 PASSAGE TO NEW YORK. Chap. I. I' 5 I h I fluttering round the flowers of a Gladiolus. In the suburbs we gathered a splendid wild flower, the scarlet Lobelia, and a large sweet-scented water-lily. The only singing bird which we heard was a thrush with a red breast, which they call here the robin. The grasshopi)ers were as numerous and as noisy as in Italy. As we returned in the evening over some low marshy ground, we saw several fire-flies, showing an occasional bright sjoark. They are small beetles resembling our male glow-worms (^Lampyris Linn., Pyrolampis scintillans Say). Aug. 13. — A large steam-ship carried us from Newhaven to New York, a distance of about ninety miles, in less than six hours. We had Long Island on the one side, and the main land on the other, the scenery at first tame from the width of the channel, but very lively and striking when this became more contracted, and at length we seemed to sail into the very suburbs of the great city itself, passing between green islands, some of them covered with buildings and villas. AYe had the same bright sunshine which we have enjoyed ever since we landed, and an atmosphere unsullied by the chim- nics of countless steam-boats, factories, and houses, of a population of more than 300,000 souls, thanks to the remoteness of all fuel save anthracite and wood. Chap. 1. SCENERY OP THE HI'DSON. 15 Next (lay, I went with INIr. Redficltl, well known by his meteorological writings, across the Passaic river to Newark in New Jersevj where we examined quarries of the New lied Sandt«tone, and saw the surfaces of the strata ripple-marked, and with im- pressions of rain-drops. They also exhibit casts on their under sides of cracks, which have been formed by the shrinking of the layers of clay when drying. These appearances, together with imbedded fragments of carbonized fossil wood, such as may have been drifted on a beach, bespeak the littoral character of the formation on which, in many places in Con- necticut and Massachussetts, the fossil footsteps of birds, to which I shall afterwards allude, have been found imprinted. Aug. 16. — Sailed in the splendid new steam-ship the Troy, in company with about 500 passengers, from New York to Albany, 145 miles, at the rate of about 16 miles an hour. When I was informed that " seventeen of these vessels went to a mile," it seemed incredible, but I found that in fact the deck measured 300 feet in length. To give a suffi- cient supply of oxygen to the anthracite, the machinery is made to work two bellows, which blow a strong current of air into the furnace. The Hud- son is an arm of the sea or estuary, about twelve fathoms deep, above New York, and its waters are » ? J '^ fv } 1 ; 'i 16 ALBANY. Chap. T. inhabited by a curious mixture of marine and fresh- water plants and molkisca. At first on our left, or on the western bank, we had a lofty precipice of columnar basalt from 400 to 600 feet in height, called the Palisades, extremely picturesque. This basalt rests on sandstone, which is of the same age as that before mentioned near Newhaven, but has an opposite or westward dijo. On arriving at the Highlands, the winding channel is closed in by steep hills of gneiss on both sides, and the vessel often holds her course as if bearing directly on the land. The stranger cannot guess in which direction he is to penetrate the rocky gorge, but he soon emerges again into a broad valley, the blue Catskill mountains appearing in the distance. The scenery deserves all the praise which has been lavished upon it, and when the passage is made in nine hours it is full of variety and contrast. At Albany, a town finely situated on the Hudson, and the capital of the State of New York, I found several geologists employed in the Government sur- vey, and busily engaged in forming a fine museum, to illustrate the organic remains and mineral jiroducts of the country. This State is divided into about the same number of counties as England, and is not very inferior to it in extent of territory. The legislature four years ago voted a considerable sum of Chap. I. GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS. 17 M' money, more than 200,000 dollars, or 40,000 guineas, for exploring ita Natural History and mineral struc- ture ; and at the end of the first two years several of the geological surveyors, of whom four principal ones were appointed, reported, among other results, their opinion, that no coal would ever be discovered in their respective districts. This announcement caused no small disappointment, especially as the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania was very rich in coal. Accordingly, during my tour, I heard fre- quent complaints that, not satisfied with their in- ability to find coal themselves, the surveyors had decided that no one else would ever be able to detect any, having had the presumption to pass a sentence of future sterility on the whole land. Yet, in spite of these expressions of ill-humour, it was satisfactory to observe that the rashness of private speculators had received a wholesome check ; and large sums of money, which for twenty years previously had been annually squandered in trials for coal in rocks below the carboniferous series, were henceforth saved to the public. There can be little doubt that the advantage derived to the resources of the State by the cessation of this annual outlay alone, and the more profitable direction since given to private enterprise, is suffi- cient to indemnify the country, on mere utilitarian grounds, for the sum so munificently expended by jv li > n 18 MOHAWK VALLEY. Chap. I. the government on geological investigations. The resemblance of certain Silurian rocks on the banks of the Hudson river to the bituminous shales of the true Coal formation was the chief cause of the deception which misled the mining adventurers of New York. I made an excursion southwards from Albany, with a party of geologists, to Normanskill Creek, where there is a waterfall, to examine these black slates, containing graptolitcs, trilobites, and other Lower Silurian fossils. By persons ignorant of the order of superposition and of fossil remains, they might easily be mistaken for Coal measures, especially as some small i)articlcs of anthracite, per- haps of animal origin, do actually occur in them. On leaving Albany, I determined so to plan my route to the Falls of Niagara and back again to the Hudson, as to enable me to sec by the way the entire succession of mineral groups from the lowest Silurian up to the coal of Pennsylvania. Mr. James Hall, to whose hands the north-west division of the geological survey of New York had been confided, kindly offered himself as my guide. Taking the railway to Schenectady, and along the Mohawk valley, we first stopped at Little Falls, where we examined the gneiss and the lowest Silurian . sand- stone resting upon it. We then pursued our journey along the line of the Erie Canal and the Mohawk u . r. Chap. I. ANCIENT OR SILURIAN FORMATIONS. 19 River, stopping here and there to examine quarries of limestone, and making a short detour through the beautiful valley of Cedarville in Herkimer County, where there is a fine section of the strata. After- wards we explored the picturesque ravine through which the Genesee flows at Rochester, the river descending by a succession of cataracts over the same rocks which are exjiosed farther westward on the Niagara. The excavations also made for the grand canal of Lockport afforded us a fine oppor- tunity of seeing these older fossiliferous rocks laid open to view. At this point the barges laden with merchandise climb up, by a series of locks placed one above the other, to the table land in which Lake Erie is situated. In the course of this short tour, I became convinced that we must turn to the Neio World if we wish to see in perfection the oldest monuments of the earth's history, so far at least as relates to its earliest inhabitants. Certainly in no other country are these ancient strata developed on a grander scale, or more plentifully charged with fossils ; and, as they arc nearly horizontal, the order of their relative position is always clear and un- equivocal. They exhibit, moreover, in their range from the Hudson River to the Niagara, some fine examples of the gradual manner in which certain sets of strata thin out when followed for hundreds ! I I ! if t 20 ANCIENT OPw SILURIAN FORMATIONS. Chap. I. of miles, while others j^rcviously wanting become intercalated in the series. Thus, for example, some of the limestones "which are several hundred feet thick in the Helderbcrg Hills, near Albany, are scarcely forty feet thicjk in the Niagara district ; and on the other hand, the rocks over which the cataract of Niagara is precipitated, dwindle away to such insignificant dimensions when followed eastward to the hills S. W. of Albany, that their place in the series there can scarcely be recognised. Another interesting fact may be noticed as the result even of a cursory survey of the fossils of these North American rocks, namely, that while some of the species agree, the majority of them are not identical with those found in strata, which are their equiva- lents in age and position on the other side of the Atlantic. Some fossils which are identical, such as Atrypa affinis, LeptcBna depressa, and L. eit(/lt/pha, are precisely those shells which have a great vertical and horizontal range in Europe, — species Avhich were capable of surviving many successive changes in the earth's surface, and for the same reason enjoyed at certain periods a wide geographical range. It has been usually affirmed that in the rocks older than the carboniferous, the fossil fauna in different i)art8 of the globe was almost every where the same ; but, judging from the first assemblage of organic re- a I. Chap. I. PROSPERITY OF THE PEOPLE. 21 mains which I have seen here, it appears to me, that however close the general analogy of forms may be, there is evidence of the same law of variation in space as now prevails in the living creation. A few years ago, it was a fatiguing tour of many weeks to reach the Falls of Niagara from Albany. We are now carried along at the rate of sixteen miles an hour, on a railway often supported on piles, through large swamps covered with aquatic trees and shrubs, or through dense forests, with occasional clearings, where orchards are planted by anticipation among the stumps, before they have even had time to run up a log-house. The traveller views with surprise, in the midst of so much unoccupied land, one flourishing town after another, such as Utica, Syracuse, and Auburn. At Rochester he admires the streets of large houses, inhabited by 20,000 souls, where the first settler built his log-cabin in the wilderness only twenty-five years ago. At one point our train stopped at a handsome new built station-house, and, looking out at one window, we saw a group of Indi'ins of the Oneida tribe, lately the owners of the broad lands around, but now humbly offering for sale a few trinkets, tach. as baskets ornamented with porcupine quills, moccasins of moose-deer skin, and boxes of birch-bark. At the other window stood a well-dressed waiter handing ices and confectionary. I- 22 PROSPERITY OF THE PEOPLE. Chap. I. i 4 [4 I' i- 111 I' J |i I I When we reflect that some single towns, of which the foundations were laid by persons still living, can already number a population, equal to all the abori- ginal hunter tribes who possessed the forests for hun- dreds of miles around, we soon cease to repine at the extraordinary revolution, however much we may commiserate the unhappy fate of the disinherited race. They who are accustomed to connect the romance of their travels in Europe or Asia with historical re- collections and the monuments of former glory, with the study of masterpieces in the fine arts, or with grand and magnificent scenery, will hardly believe the romantic sensations which may be inspired by the aspect of this region, where very few points of pictu- resque beauty meet the eye, and where the aboriginal forest has lost its charm of savage wildness by the intrusion of railways and canals. The foreign natu- ralist indeed sees novelty in every plant, bird, and insect ; and the remarkable resemblances of the rocks at so great a distance from home are to him a soiu'cc of wonder and instruction. But there arc other objects of intense interest, to enliven or excite the imagination of every traveller. Here, instead of dwelling on the past, and on the signs of pomp and grandeur which have vanished, the mind is filled with images of coming power and splendour. The vast stride made by one generation in a brief moment of ! i Chap. I. PROSPEIUTY OF THE PEOPLE. 23 time, naturally disposes us to magnify and exaggerate the rapid rate of future improvement. The contem- plation of so much prosperity, such entire absence of want and poverty, so many school-houses and churches, rising every where in the woods, and such a general desire of education, with the consciousness that a great continent lies beyond, which has still to be appropriated, fills the traveller with cheering thoughts and sanguine hopes. He may be reminded that there is another side to the picture, that where the success has been so brilliant and where large fortunes have been hastily realised, there will be rash speculations and bitter disappointments ; but these ideas do not force themselves into the reveries of the passing stranger. He sees around him the solid fruits of victory, and forgets that many a soldier in the foremost ranks has fallen in the breach ; and cold indeed would be his temperament if he did not sympathise with the freshness and hopefulness of a new country, and feel as men past the prime of life are accustomed to feel when in company with the young, who are full of health and buoyant spirits, of faith and confidence in the future. Aug. 24. — In the suburbs of Kochester, Mr. Hall and I visited a spot where the remains of the great Mastodon had been dug up from a bed of white shell- marl. I found fragments of the fossil teeth and ,i' ,1 r I i I I* it '1 I W iS: 24 LAKE ONTARIO. — TORTOISES. Chap. I. ivory of one tusk, and ascertained that the accom- panying shells were of recent species of the genera Limnea, Planorbis, Valvata, C7/clas, &c. We also examined the narrow ridge composed of sand and gravel between Rochester and Lake Ontario, which has been traced for a hundred miles, running nearly parallel to the lake, and from three to eight miles dis- tant from it. It rises from ten to twenty feet above the general level of the surrounding plain of clay, and presents a steep slope to the north and south, afford- ing an excellent road, like the sand-ridges or osars which I have seen in Sweden, and which are doubt- less of similar origin. Geologists are all agreed that these and other similar ridges surrounding the great Canadian lakes, and occurring at different heights above them, were once lines of beach surrounding ffreat bodies of water. Whether these consisted of lakes or seas, — how the water came to stand at so many different levels, and whether some of the ridges were not originally banks and bars of sand formed under water, are points which I shall discuss in the sequel. While we were roaming along the shore of Lake Ontario, to compare the old ridge road with the modern beach, we saw several tortoises of different species basking in the sun on logs of drift wood in the shallow ponds connected with the lake. We caught Ktg Chap. I. TORTOISES. 25 one of tlicsc {^Tcstado picta), wliich has a gaily coloured shell, and I afterwards carried it a day's journey in the carriage, and then turned it out, to see whether, as I was told, it would know its way back to Lake Ontario. I am bound to admit that its instinct on this occasion did not fail, for it made directly for a ravine, in the bottom of which was a stream that would lead it in time to the Genesee River, and this would carry it to its native lake, if it escaped destruction at the falls below Rochester, where the celebrated diver, Sam Patch, perished, after he had succeeded in throwing himself with im- punity down several other great waterfalls. There is a freshwater tortoise in Europe ( Terrapcna Eu- ropea), found in Hungary, Prussia, and Silesia, as far north as lat. 50° to 52°. It also occurs near Bordeaux, and in the north of Italy, 44° and 45° N. lat., which precisely corresponds with the latitude of Lake Ontario. In moist places along the lake shore, and in the lanes and high roads, we saw numerous yellow but- terflies ( Collas philodice — C. Europoma of some authors) very like a British species. Sometimes forty clustering on a small spot resembled a plot of primroses, and as they rose altogether, and flew off slowly on every side, it was like the play of a beau- tiful fountain. m, 26 NEW SETTLERS. Chap. I. On our way home through the woods we stopped at the cabin of some new settlers near the lake, many- miles from any neighbours, in the midst of a square clearing covered with blackened stumps, where not a single tree or shrub had been spared. The view was bounded on every side by a dense wall of dark wood striped with white by the vertical lines of the numerous tall and straight trees without side branches, and sup- porting a dark canojiy of foliage. When we admired the forest, the settler's wife was pleased, but said, sighing, that she could not get her children to see any beauty in trees. They had never known the old country, nor other friends, and were happier than she and her husband could be, though in their worldly concerns they were thriving, and had every reason to feel content, except when attacked by the ague, so common in the newly-cleared grounds. I. Chap. II. FALLS OF NIAGARA. 27 ,\v^ i 1 ■, CHAPTER II. Distant and near View of the Falls of Niagairi. — Whether the Falls have receded from Queenston to their present Site. — Geographical Features of the liegion. — Course of the River above and beloiv the Fulls. — Recent Proofs of Frosion. — Historical Data in the Works of Hennepin and Kalm. — Geo- logical Evidence derived from Fluviatile Strata or Remnants of an old River-bed in Goat Island and elsewhere. — Diffi- culty of computing the Rate of the retrograde Movement. — Varying Hardness and Thichiess of the Rocks undermined. — Fidiwe Recession. — Age of the Drift and Limestone Escarp- ments. — Successive Changes ivhich preceded and accompanied the Origin of the Falls. — Reflections on the Lapse of jyast Time. Aug. 27. — We first came in sight of the Falls of Niagara when they were about three miles distant. The sun was shining full upon them — no building in view — nothing but the green wood, the falling water, and tlie white foam. At that moment they appeared to me more beautiful than I had expected, and less grand ; but after several days, wlien I had enjoyed a nearer view of the two cataracts, had listened to their thundering sound, and gazed on them for hours from above and below, and had watched the river foaming over the rapids, then plunging headlong into the dark pool, — and when I had explored the delightful island which divides the falls, where the solitude of c 2 28 FALLS OF NIAGARA : Chap. II. the ancient forest is still unbroken, I at last learned by degrees to comprehend the wonders of the scene, and to feel its full magnificence. Early in the morning after our arrival, I saw from the window of our hotel, on the American side, a long train of white vapoury clouds hanging over the deep chasm below the falls. They were slightly tinted by the rays of the rising sun, and blown slowly north W"^'«^« ^^y " g entle breeze from thn^jool bolny, the cataract, which was itself invisible from this point of view. No fog was rising from the ground, the sky was clear above ; and as the day advanced, and the air grew warm, the vapours all disappeared. This scene reminded me of mv first view of Mount Etna from Catania, at sunrise in the autumn of 1828, when I saw dense volumes of steam issuing from the summit of the highest crater in a clear blue sky, which, at the height of more than two miles above the sea, assumed at once the usual shape and hues of clouds in the upper atmosphere. These, too, va- nished before noon, as soon as the sun's heat in- creased. Etna presents us not merely with an image of the nower of subterranean heat, but a record also of the vast period of time during which that power has been exerted. A majestic mountain has been pro- duced by volcanic action, yet the time of which the I. (1 Chap. II. THEIR GEOGRArillCAL FEATURES. 29 r volcano forms the register, however vast, is found by the geologist to be cf inconsiderable amount, even in the modern annals of the cartii's history. In like manner, the Falls of Niagara teach us not merely to appreciate the power of moving water, but furnish us at the same time with data for estimating the enormous lapse of ages during which that force has operated. A deep and long ravine has been ex- cavated, and the river has required ages to accomplish the task, yet the same region affords evidence that the sum of these ages is as nothing, and as the work of yesterday, when compared to the antecedent periods, of which there are monuments in the same district. It has long been a favourite subject of discussion whether the Falls were once situated seven miles farther north, or at Queenston. The ideal bird's- eye view given in the frontispiece may assist the reader who has not visited the spot to form a tolerably correct general notion of the geographical configuration of this country, which is very simjDle. The view has been constructed from a sketch pub- lished by Mr. Bakewell, in Loudon's Magazine for 1830, into which the geological representation of the rocks, as they appear on the surface and in the ravine of the Niagara, has been introduced from the c 3 I !'» 1 j I'l m 1 ij ;i !' n I 1 i i 30 COURSE OF THE mvEii Chap. II, State Survey by Mr. Hull.* The platform, in a depression of whieli Lake Eric is situated, is more than 330 feet above Lake Ontario, and the descent from a higher to a h)wer level is sudden and abrupt at the escarpment called the Queenston heights. The strata throughout this whole region arc nearly horizontal, but they have a gentle dip to the south of 25 feet in a mile. This inclination is sufficient to cause the different groups of rock to crop out one from beneath the other, or come up to the surface in parallel zones, which may be traced for a great distance east and west through the state of Xew York and Canada. (See Map.) They all consist of different members of the Silurian series, the upper- most or newest beinij; those nearest to Lake Erie. (See section fig. 4., p. 45.) In the bird's-eye view, the Niagara is seen bounded by low banks where it issues from Lake Erie, and varying in width from one to three miles. It here resembles a prolongation of the tranquil lake, being interspersed with low wooded islands. This lake-like scenery continues for about fifteen miles, durino; which the fall of the * JNIr. BakewcU gave me his original sketches in 1841, and 1 conceived the idea of oombininGj his pictorial view with a ueo- logical representation of the rocks before I gave a lecture on the Niagara district at Boston, in October 1841, in which, and in planning some of the other diagrams, and in discussing the theory of recession, I was assisted by Mr. Hall. •.II. (r- ^'!:i \H % m V fi 1 ■ I' li 1 . LJ 1) .-:».'' 16 tht mo mi( Fa bel wi< 'i, ':*^-r .,(■ ,,; the " -• cm , try the adc ' " ant ma wh cir( pie strj pos clif str( the ■ tre( .• ] ■-J Chap. II. AIJOVE AND BELOW THE FALL?*. 31 river scarcely exceeds as many feet, but on reaching the rapids, it descends over a limestone Ijcd about 50 feet in less than a mile, and is then thrown down about 165 feet perpendicularly at the Falls. The largest of these, called the Ilorse-shoc Fall, is 1800 feet, or more than a third of a mile, broad, the island in the midst somewhat less in width, and the American Fall about 600 feet wide. The deep narrow chasm below the great cataract is from 200 to 400 yards wide, and 300 feet deep; and here in seven miles the river descends 100 feet, at the end of which it emerges from the gorge Jnto the open and flat coun- try, so nearly on a levv^ with Lake Ontario that there is only a fall of about four feet in the seven additional miles which intervene between Queenston and the lake. The great ravine is winding, and makes a turn nearly at right angles to itself at the whirlpool, where the Niagara sweeps round a large circular basin, but it is represented in the frontis- piece as nearly straight, for the sake of showing the stratification; and its proportional height is pur- posely exaggerated. At some points the boundary cliffs are undermined on one side by the impetuous stream, but there is usually a tahis at the base of the precipice, supporting a very ornamental fringe of trees. It has long been the popular belief, from a mere I C A M : ^1 li 32 RECENT PROOFS OF EROSION. Chap. II. cursory inspection of tliis district, that the Niagara once flowed in a sliiillow valley acro&^j the whole plat- form from the present site of the Falls to the Queen - ston heights, where it is supposed the cataract was first situated, and that the river has been slowly eating its way backwards through the rocks for a distance of seven miles. According to this hypothesis, the Falls must have had originally nearly twice their present height, and must have been always diminishing in grandeur from age to age, as they will continue to do in future so long as the retrograde movement is pro- longed. It becomes, therefore, a matter of no small curiosity and interest to inquire at what rate the work of excavation is now going on, and thus to obtain a measure for calculating how many thousands of years or centuries have been required to hollow out the chasm already excavated. It is an ascertained fact, that the Falls do not remain absolutely stationary at the same point of sjjace, and that they have shifted their position slightly during the last half century. Every observer will also be convinced that the small portion of the great ravine, which has been eroded within the me- mory of man, is so precisely identical in character with the whole gorge for seven miles below, that the river supplies an adequate cause for executing the r. •a Chap. II. RECENT PROOFS OF EROSION. 33 task assigned to it, provided we grant sufficient time for its completion. The waters, after cutting through strata of lime- stone, about fifty feet thick in the rapids, descend perpendicularly at the Falls over another mass of limestone about ninety feet thick, beneath whicli lie soft shales of equal thickness, continually under- mined by the action of the spray driven violently by gusts of wind against the base of the precipice. In consequence of this disintegration, portions of the incumbent rock are left unsupported, and tumble down from time to time, so that the cataract is made to recede southwards. The sudden descent of huge rocky fragments of the undermined limestone at the Horseshoe Fall, in 1828, and another at the American Fall, in 1818, are said to have shaken tlie adjacent country like an earthquake. According to the statement of our guide in 1841, Samuel Hooker, an indentation of about forty feet has been produced in the middle of the ledge of limestone at the lesser fall since the year 1815, so that it has begun to assume the shape of a crescent, while within the same period the Horseshoe Fall has been altered so as less to deserve its name. Goat Island has lost several acres in area in the last four years, and I have no doubt that this waste neither is, nor has been, a mere temporary accident, since I found that the same c 5 i I !, Hi " 34 HISTORICAL DATA Chap. II. i t ': recession was in progress in various other waterfalls which I visited with Mr. Hall, in the state of New York. Some of these intersect the same rocks as the Niagara — for example the Genesee at Rochester; others arc cutting their way through newer formations, as Allan's Creek below Le Roy, or the Genesee at its upper falls at Portage. Mr. Bakewell calcu- lated that, in the forty years preceding 1830, the Niao-ara had been G;oin2: back at the rate of about a yard annually, but I conceive that one foot per year would be a much more probable conjecture, in which case 35,000 years would have been required for the retreat of the Falls from the escarpment of Queen- ston to their piesent site, if we could assume that the rctroi»;rade movement had been uniform throuixh- out. Tliis, however, could not have been the case, as at every step in the process of excavation the height of the preci])icc, the hardness of the materials at its base, and the quantity of fallen matter to be removed, must have varied. At some points it may have receded much faster than at present, at others much slower, and it would be scarcely possible to decide whether its average progress has been more or less rapid than now. Unfortunately our historical evidence of the former condition of the cataract is meagre and seamy in the extreme. Sixty years ago the whole district between — ' " ' •• ■M h] p as l>v l:'a»h., it %\ I > 1 : I J I if m r -'.•] |!i 1° \ ^Ml','. ^\' r.Vl''..MAlVAI'w\ l''Al..US, I ! I Chap. II. IN THE WORKS OF HENNEPIN. 35 Lakes Erie and Ontario was a wilderness in which the Indian hunter chased the bear and the buffalo. When at Boston, ray attention was called by Mr. Ingraham to a work translated from the original French of Father Hennepin, a missionary who gave a description of the grand cataract and a plate of it, as it appeared in the year 1678. It is not wonderful that coming suddenly upon the Falls, which no Euro- pean traveller had ever seen before, he should have believed them to be twice their real height. " Betwixt the lakes Ontario and Erie," he says, " there is a vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls after an astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. As to the waters of Italy and Swedeland, they are but sorry patterns of it, and this wonderful downfall is compounded of two great Falls, with an isle in the middle, and there is another cascade less than the other two which falls from west to cast. I wished a hundred times that somebody had been with us, who could have de- scribed the wonders of this frightful fall. In the mean time, accept the following draught such as it is." — From his plate it appears that this third cascade was produced by what he terms " the elbow " caused by the projection of the table rock, which must then have been more prominent than now. Seventy-three years afterwards, or in 1751, a letter c G 1:1 I '1 ' '9'W''rt(','' f^TW."''? " ' **^S**?*^ "^ ''vi^i^ 1,. |,.j,|,>i' »,om> .HMlllCjl » ,v.t, /,/>,■./,' ,;,(,/i 1 i • I \ i;A'-?A- 36 kalm's description. Chap. II. "■a was published in the Gentleman's ^lagazinc for that year by Kalm, the Swedish botanist, on the Falls of Niagara. His description is also illustrated by a plate, in which the proportional height and breadth of the Falls are given more correctly. The lesser Fall on iho left bank of the river is omitted ; but at the place where it had been represented in Father Henne- pin's sketch,. Kalm inserts the letter "«," referring to a note in which he says, " Here the water was for- merly forced out of its direct course by a projecting rock, which when standing turned the water off" ob- liquely across the other Fall." This observation confirms the reality of Hennepin's oblique cascade, and shows that some waste had been going on in the intermediate seventy-three years, making a visible alteration in the scene, and leading us to infer that the rocks have been suffering con- tinual dilapidation for more than the last century and a half. In the absence of more ample historical data, we are fortunately not without geological evidence of the former existence of a channel of the Niagara at a much higher level, before the table-land was inter- sected by the great ravine. Long before my visit to the Niagara, I had been informed of the existence on Goat Island of beds of gravel and sand containing fluviatile shells, and some account had been given of I J Chap. II. UIVER-BED IN GOAT ISLAND. 37 these by Mr. Hall in his first report in 1839 ; I there- fore proposed to him that we should examine these carefully, and see if we could trace any remnants of the same along the edges of the river-cliffs below the Falls. We began by collecting in Goat Island shells of the genera Unio, Cyclas, Melania, Valvata, Lim- nea, Planorhis, and Helix, all of recent species, in the superficial deposit. They form regular beds, and nu- merous individuals of the Urao and Cyclas have both their valves united. We then found the same form- ation exactly opposite to the Falls on the top of the Fig. 1. Section at Xiagara Falls. Jj. Limestone 80 feet thick. S. Siinle 80 fort thick. d. Freshwater strat.i on Goat Island, above 'iO feet thick. . - u -Si 51 (A c o s x ti t^ o 4-1 .a ^ o. it -s O T3 c 8 u •3 _o c .CI lA o 4^ CA iz •3 C CS .2 to w a eg 0) C o s 3 o £3 cS ti p* (« 3 i? S •3 rt c <«' »: o rt ;" ft >- /5 0) . Cfl 4J •S OJ 3 <« S U b« §.2 £1. ■" ^ -A t- -3 .5 ^ £ ■« u s .r ^ CO .fcrf I i ° 2 o § 'S oi !^ -A 0; rt s m o c g 5 5 bo C rt ^ •^ T3 O • u ^ to rt -3 rt ~ u ^ rt o to ~ .5 3 ?< 2 2U - J= t*- a) = x: c o to 0) c o •ai §

l in their geological and geographical position to those actually seen on the river Genesee at Rochester, would thus be formed. The recession of the upper- most must have been gradually retarded by the thickening of the incumbent limestone (No. 8, fig. 4), in proportion as the Falls sawed their way southwards. By this means the second cataract, which would not suffer the same retardation, might overtake it, and the two united would then be retarded by the large quantity of rock to be removed, until the lowest fall would come up to them, and then the whole v/ould be united into one. The principal events enmnerated in the above retrospect, comprising the submergence and re-emer- gence of the Canadian lake district and valley of the St. LaAvrence, the deposition of freshwater strata, and the gradual erosion of a ravine seven miles long, are all so modern in the earth's history as to belong to a period when the marine, the fluviatile, and terrestrial shells, were the same, or nearly the same, as those now livinjiij. Yet if we fix our thouirhts on any one portion of this period — on the lapse of time, for cxami)lc, required for the recession of the Niagara from the escarpment to the Falls,— how immeasurably great will its duration appear in comparison with the sum of years to which the annals of the human race are limited ! Had we Chap. II. LAPSE OF PAST TIME. 51 happened to discover strata, charged with fluviatile shells of recent species, and enclosing the bones and teeth of a Mastodon, near a river at the bottom of some valley, we might naturally have inferred that the buried quadruped had perished at an era long after the canoes of the Indian hunter had navigated the North American waters. Such an inference might easily have been drawn respecting the fossil tusk of the great elephantine quadruped, which I saw taken out of the shell-marl on the banks of the Genesee River near Rochester (sec p. 23.). But fortunately on the Niagara, we may turn to the deep ravine, and behold therein a chronometer measuring rudely, yet emphatically, the vast magni- tude of the interval of years, which separate the present time from the epoch when the Niagara flowed at a higher level several miles further north across the platform. We then become conscious how far the two events before confounded together, — the entombment of the Mastodon, and the date of the first peopling of the earth by man, — may recede to distances almost indefinitely remote from each other. But, however much we may enlarge our ideas of the time which has elapsed since the Niagara first began to drain the waters of the upper lakes, we have seen that this period was one only of a series, all be- D 2 ^: U I i .«^ 52 REFLECTIONS ON THE Chap. II. (■ longing to the present zoological epoch ; or that in which the living testaceous fauna, whether freshwater or marine, had already come into being. If such events can take place while the zoology of the earth remains almost stationary and unaltered, what ages may not be comprehended in those successive tertiary periods during which the Flora and Fauna of the globe have been almost entirely changed. Yet how subordinate a place in the long calendar of geological chronology do the successive tertiary periods them- selves occupy ! How much more enormous a dura- tion must we assign to many antecedent revolutions of the earth and its inhabitants I No analogy can be found in the natural world to the immense scale of these divisions of past time, unless we contemplate the celestial spaces which have been measured by the astronomer. Some of the nearest of these within the limits of the solar system, as, for example, the orbits of the planets, are reckoned by hundreds of millions of miles, which the imagination in vain en- deavours to grasp. Yet one of these spaces, such as the diameter of the earth's orbit, is regarded as a mere unit, a mere infinitesimal fraction of the dis- tance which separates our sun from the nearest star. By pursuing still farther the same investigations, we learn that there are luminous clouds, scarcely dis- tinguishable l>y the naked eye, but resolvable })y the Chap. II. LAPSE OF PAST TIME. 53 1 telescope into clusters of stars, which arc so much more remote, that the interval between our sun and Sirius may be but a fraction of this larger distance. To regions of space of this higher order in point of magnitude, we may probably compare such an inter- val of time as that which divides the human epoch from the origin of the coralline limestone over which the Niagara is precipitated at the Falls. Many have been the successive revolutions in organic life, and many the vicissitudes in the physical geography of the globe, and often has sea been converted into land, and land into sea, since that rock was formed. The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalaya, have not only be- gun to exist as lofty mountain chains, but the solid materials of which they are composed have been slowly elaborated beneath the sea within the stu- pendous interval of ages here alluded to. The geologist may muse and speculate on these events until, filled with awe and admiration, he for- gets the presence of the mighty cataract itself, and no longer sees the rapid motion of its waters, nor hears their sound, as they fall into the deep abyss. But whenever his thoughts arc recalled to the pre- sent, the tone of his mind, — the sensations awakened in his soul, will be found to be in perfect harmony with the grandeur and beauty of the glorious scene which surrounds him. «i* s 3 .1^ 54 TOUR TO PENNSYLVANIA. CiiAr. nr. y: 1 .) 'f '\ I CHAPTER HI. Tour from the Niagnrn to the Northern Frontier of Pennsylvania. — Ancient Gypsiferous Formation of New York. — Fossil Mastodon at Geneseo. — Scenery. — Sudden Growth of New Totvns. — Coal of Blossherg, and resemblance to British Coal Measures. — Stigmaria. — Humming Birds. — Nomenclature of Places. — Helderherg Mountains and Fossils. — Refractory Tenants. — Travelling in the States. — Politeness to Women. — Canal-hout. — Domestic Service. — Progress of Civilisation. — Philadelphia. — Fire-engines. Sept. 2. 1841. — FiiOM Niagara Falls wc travelled to the large town of Buffalo, on the shores of Lake Erie, and then passed through Williamsville, Le Roy, and Geneseo, in the State of New York. The hori- zontal Silurian rocks of this region nro in general extremely like those of corresponding age in Europe, consisting of mud-stones and limestone, with similar corals and shells. But there is one remarkable ex- ception; — the occurrence in the middle of the series of a formation of red, green, and bluish grey marls w^ith beds of gypsum, and occasional salt-springs, the whole being from 800 to 1,000 feet thick, and undis- tinguishable in mineral character from |)arts of the Upper New Ked or Trias of Europe. Near Le Roy I saw these marls and the gypsum exposed to view in quarries. In the overlying limestone at Williams- ville were large masses of corals, of the genera Chap. III. FOSSIL MASTODON AT GENESEO. 55 FavositcSf C)/sti])h?/lluni, and others, in the position in which they grew. Some of the species agree with British fossils, but the greater part of them, as I may state on the authority of Mr. Lonsdale, who has studied my specimens, are distinct. When at the village of Genesco, I learnt that ten years before, the bones of a Mastodon had been ob- tained from a bog in the neighbourhood, and I was desirous of knowing whether any shells accompanied the bones, and whether they were of recent species. Mr. Hall and I therefore procured workmen, who were soon joined by several amateurs of Genesco, and a pit was dug to the depth of about five feet from the sur- face. Here we came down upon a bed of white shell- marl and sand, in which lay portions of the skull, ivory tusk, and vertebra;, of the extinct quadruped. The shells proved to be all of existing freshwater and land species now common in this district. I had been told that the Mastodon's teeth were taken out of muck, or the black superficial peaty earth of this bog. I was therefore glad to ascertain that it was really buried in the shell-marl below the peat, and therefore agreed in situation with the large fossil elks of Ire- land, which, though often said to occur in peat, are in fact met with in subjacent beds of marl. At the Falls of Le Eoy, and at the Upper Falls of the River Genesee at Portage, I had opportunities of D 4 «)" Im i ,: 1 ..- m^.m.-' ■ i mt if irmt^^m'^mtmmmmm 56 AMERICAN DRIVERS. Chap. III. *>. it ¥ f ' h; ': ti:f observiiific how both of these cascades have been cut- ting their way backwards through the Silurian rocks, even within the memory of the present settlers. They have each hollowed out a deep ravine with perpendicular sides, bearing the same proportion in volume to the body of water flowing through them which tlie great ravine of the Niagara does to that river. Mr. Hall took leave of us at Geneseo, after which I set out on a tour to examine the series of rocks be- tween the upper Silurian strata of the State of New York and the Coal of Pennsylvania. With this view I took ihc direction of Blossberg, where the most nortliern coal mines of the United States arc worked. On this occasion we loft the main road, and en- tered, for the first time, an American stage-coach, having been warned not to raise our expectations too high in regard to the ease or speed of our conveyance. Accordingly, we found that after much fatigue, we had only accomplished a journey of 46 miles in 12 hours, between Geneseo and Dansville. We had four horses ; and wlien I complained at one of the inns that our coachman seemed to take pleasure in driving rapidly v^ver deep ruts and the roughest ground, it was explained to me that this was tlie first time in his life he had ever attempted to drive any vehicle, whether two or four-wheeled. The coolness *- - 4i ¥ IV: Chap. III. WANT OF FINE SCENERY. 57 and confidence with which every one here is ready to try his hand at any craft is truly amusing. A few days afterwards I engaged a young man to drive nie in a gig from Tioga to Blossberg. On the way, lie pointed out, first, his father's property, and then a farm of his own, which ho had lately purchased. As he was not yet twenty years of age, I expressed sur- prise that he had got on so well in the world, when he told me that he had been editor of the " Tioga Democrat " for several years, but had now sold his share of the newspaper. In the region between Lake Erie and the borders of Pennsylvania, as Avell as in that immediately south of Lake Ontario, there is an entire want of fine scenery, as might have been anticipated where all the strata are horizontal. The monotony of the endless forest Is sometimes relieved by a steep escarpment, a river with wooded islands, or a lake ; but the only striking features in the landscape are the waterfalls, and the deep chasms hollowed out by them in the course of ages. As the opposite banks of these ravines are on the same level, including that of the Niagara itself, we come abruptly to their edges before we have any suspicion of their existence, and we must travel out of our way to enjoy a sight of them. At length we reached the water-shed, where the streams flow, on tlie one side,, northwards to Lfikc D 5 'i\ HW! 58 FOSSIL REMAINS OF FISH. Chap. III. Ill Erie, and on the other, southwards, to the Susque- hanna. I began to wonder how the Indians ever obtained any correct notions of topography in so con- tinuous a forest, all the smaller rivers, with their islands, being embowered and choked up with trees. I soon ceased to repine at the havoc that was going on in tlio fine timber which bounded our road on every side. After traversing successive zones of the Upper Silurian strata, I at length entered at Bath upon the olive-coloured slates and grey sandstone, which seem to be the equivalent of the low^er part of the Old Ked, or Devonian of England. In this rock some streaks of carljonaceous matter, which soon thin out, and are rarely three inches thick, are met with. I found a proprietor on Spalding's Creek preparing to sink a costly shaft for coal, and I earnestly dissuaded him from his project, referring him to the New York survey. Every scientific man who discourages a favourite mining scheme must make up liis mind to be as ill received as the physician who gives an honest opinion that his patient's disorder is incurable. After the Olive Slate, I came to an inciunbcnt formation of red sandstone near Tioga, and collected fish of two species of Jlolopfic/iius, one ai)parently identical with //. nobiUsslmus, a fossil of the ]]ritish Old Red, and another which, I learn from Sir Philip f iT i Chap. III. SUDDEN GIIOWTII OF NEW TOWNS. 59 Egerton, belongs to an entirely new type of this genus. With these were a species of Chelonicthys of large dimensions, a form also very characteristic of the same formation both in Russia and Scotland. Sept. 5. — At Bath I hired a private carriage for Corning. Although there are two railways here with locomotive engines, one leading to the south, the other for conveying the coal of Blossberg to the Erie canal, I looked in vain for tlie name of Corning in a newly-published map, and was informed that tlie town was only two years old. xVlrcady the school- liouse was finished, the spire of the IVIetliodlst church nearly complete, the Presbyterian one in the course of building, the site of the Episcopalian decided on. Wishing to have a carriage, I was taken to a Lu'ge livery stable, where there were several vehicles and good horses. The stumps of trees, some six feet high, are still standing in the gardens and between the houses. Our innkeeper remarked that tlie cost of uprooting them would be nearly equal to that of erecting a log-house on the same place. I auuised myself by counting the rings of annual growth in these trees, and found that some hiid been only forty years old when cut down, yet when these began to grow, no white man liad ap[)roachcd within many leagues of this \ alley; most of the older stumps went back no farther than two centuries, or to the D 8 I ' 111 i* t- if I .■^:^yy:- l7l 60 SOCIAL EQUALITY. Chap. III. landing of the pilgrim fathers, some few to the time of Sir Walter Raleigh, and scarcely one to the days of Columbus. I had before remarked that very ancient trees seemed uncommon in the aboriginal forests of this part of America. They are usually tall and straight, with no grass growing under their dark shade, although the green herbage soon springs up when the wood is removed and the sun's rays allowed to penetrate. Some of the stumps, espe- cially those of the fir tribe, take fifty years to rot away, though exposed in the air to alternations of rain and sunshine, a fact on Avhich every geologist will do well to reflect, for it is clear that the trees of a forest submerged beneath the waters, or still more, if entirely excluded from air, by becoming imbedded in sediment, may endure for centuries without decay, so tliat there may have been ample time for the slow petrifaction of erect fossil trees in the Carboniferous and otlier formations, or for the slow accunmlation around them of a great succession of strata. I asked the landlord of the inn at Cornino;, who was very attentive to his guests, to find my coach- man. He imuiediatelv called out in his bar-room, " Wliere is the cfentleman that brought this man here ? " A few days before, a farmer in Xew York had styled my wife '^ the woman," though he called his own daughters ladies, and would, I believe, have Chap. III. COAL or BLOSSBEKG. 61 freely extended that title to their maid-servant. I was told of a witness in a late trial at Boston, who stated in evidence that " while he and another gentle- man were shovelling up mud," &c. ; from which it appears that the spirit of social equality has left no other signification to the terms " gentleman " and " lady " but that of " male and female individual." Sept. 7. Blossberg,— I had now entered Pennsyl- vania, and reached one of the extreme north-eastern outliers of the great Appalachian coal-field, as Pro- fessor Rogers has termed the Coal-measures of Penn- sylvania, Ohio, and Virginia. It was the first time I had seen the true " Coal " in America, and I was much struck with its surprising analogy in mineral and fossil characters to that of Europe — the same white grits or sandstones as are used for building near Edinburgh and Newcastle — similar black shales, often bituminous, with the leaves of ferns spread out as in an herbarium, the species being for the most part identical with British fossil plants — seams of good bituminous coal, some a few inches, others several yards in thickness — beds and nodules of clav iron-stone ; and the whole series resting on a coarse grit and conglc^nerate, containing quartz pebbles, very like our Millstone Grit, and often called by the American as well as tlie English miners the *' Farewell Hock," because when they have reached ill i* %■>■■ !!'l 62 STIGMAKIA. Chap. HI. 01 I) ;,' f'l it in their borings, they take leave of all valuable fuel. Betieath this grit are those red and grey sandstones already alluded to as corresponding in mineral character, fossils, and position, with our " Old Red." I was desirous of ascertain) ns; whether a general- isation recently made by Mr. Logan in South Wales could hold good in this country. E-ich of the Welsh seams of coal, more than ninety in number, have been found to rest on a sandy clay or fircstone, in which a pecidiar species of plant called Stlgmaria abounds, to the exclusion of all others. I saw tlie Sti(jmaria at Blossbcrg, lying in abundance in the heaps of rubbish where coal had been extracted from a horizontal scam. Dr. Say- nisch, president of the mine, kindly lighted up the gallery that I might inspect the works, and we saw the black shales in the roof, adorned with beautiful fern leaves, while the floor consisted of an undcr- clay, in which the stems of Stigniaria, witli their leaves or rootlets attached, were running in all directions. The agreement of these phenomena with those of the Welsh Coal-measures, 3000 miles dis- tant, surprised me, and lead to conclusions respecting the origin of coal from plants not drifted, but growing on the spot, to which I shall refer in tlie se(picl. Dr. Saynisch, who was the first to explore the lA' - Chap. III. HUMMING-BIRDS. 63 Old i coal in this region, told me that, soon after he settled here, he shot a wolf out of his bedroom window. These animals still commit havock on the flocks, and last autumn a large panther was killed in the outskirts of Blossberg, but the bears have not been seen for several years. We rode in a hot sunny day to a large clearing in the forest far from any habitation, and I was struck with the perfect silence of the surrounding woods. We heard no call or note of any bird, nothing to remind us of the chirping of the chaffinch or autumnal song of our robin, the grasshoppers and crickets alone keeping up a ceaseless din day and night. The birds here are very abundant, and some are adorned with brilliant plumage, as the large woodpecker, with its crimson head, — the yellow-bird (^Frhi^.^; IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 7 A C. ^jio U.. 1.0 I.I y£ 40 US 2.5 2.2 Big 1.8 L25 1 1.4 I 1.6 6" ► V] n % '/ Fhotogr^hic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) •72-4503 '"'"^S^I^ '^'- ^ I I t m I in the new clearings. Tlie sap from wliich sugar is made was everywhere trickling clown into wooden troughs from gashes made in the bark. The red maples were now beginning to assume their bright autumnal tints, but the rest of the forest was as verdant as ever; a blue Lobelia, which we had gathered at the Falls of Niagara, was still in bloom, together with many white and blue asters which had only just come out. The most elegant flower in the woods at this season is the fringed gentian ( Gentiana crinitd). " Bright with Autumn dew, And colour'd with the Heaven's own blue." One day at Schoharie, a hawk pounced down from a lofty tree, and seized a stri[)ed squirrel on the ground, witliin three yards of our party. It was bearing oiF its burden with ease, until, alarmed by our shouts, it dropped the squirrel, which ran off apparently unhurt. I observed early in the morning myriads of cobwebs extending from one blade of grass to another, as we often see them on an English lawn before the dew is dried up. On our way back from Schoharie to Albany, we found the country pcoi)le in a ferment, a sheriff's officer having been seriously wounded when in the act of distraining for rent, this being the third year of the " Helderberg war," or a successful resistance & Chap. III. REFRACTORY TENANTS. 69 by an armed tenantry to the legal demands of their landlord, Mr. Van Renssalaer. It appears that a large amount of territory on both sides of the river Hudson, now supporting, according to some es- timates, a population of 100,000 souls, had long been held in fee by the Van lienssalaer family, the tenants paying a small ground rent. This system of things is regarded by many as not only in- jurious, because it imposes grievous restraints upon alienation, but as unconstitutional, or contrary to the genius of their political institutions, and tending to create a sort of feudal perpetuity. Some of the leases have already been turned into fees, but many of the tenants were unable or unwilling to pay the prices asked for such conveyances, and de- clared that they had paid rent long enough, and that it was high time that they should be owners of the land. A few years ago, when the estates descended from the late General Van Renssalaer to his sons, the attempt to enforce the landlord's rights met with open opposition. The courts of law gave judgment, and the sheriff of Albany having failed to execute his process, at length took military force in 1839, but with no better success. The governor of New York was then compelled to back him with the mili- tary array of the state, about 700 men, who began I; U J I . ' ! 11 . 1 N 11 M I i J i' \ Si I &^ n 70 TRAVELLING IN THE STATES. Chap. III. the campaign at a clay's notice in a severe snow storm. The tenants are said to have mustered against them 1500 strong, and the rents were still unpaid, when in the following year, 1840, the governor, courting popularity as it should seem, while condemning the recusants in his message, virtually encouraged them by reconunending their case to the favourable consideration of the state, hinting at the same time at legif/^ somewhat in the rank of its passen- gers with X third-class railway-carriage in England. " Que diable allait-il faire dans cettc galore ? " would have been a difficult question for me to answer, especially as I afterwards learnt that I might have hired a good private carriage at the very place where I embarked. This convenience indeed, although there is no posting, I invariably found at my com- mand in all the states of the Union, both northern and southern, which I visited during my t^tay in America. Travellers must make up their minds, in this as in other countries, to fall in now and then with fi-ee and easy people. I am bound, however, to say that in Chap. III. PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION. the two most glaring instances of vulgar familiarity wiiich we have experienced here, we found out that both the offenders had crossed the Athmtic only ten years before, and had risen rapidly from a humble station. Whatever good breeding exists here in the middle classes is certainly not of foreign importation ; and John Bull, in particular, when out of humour with the manners of the Americans, is often uncon- sciously beholding his own image in the mirror, or comparing one class of society in the United States with another in his own country, which ought, from superior afliuence and leisure, to exhibit a higher standard of refinement and intelligence. We have now seen the two largest cities, many towns and villages, besides some of the back settle- ments of New York and the Xcw England States ; an exemplification, I am told, of a population amounting to about five millions of souls. We have met with no beggars, witnessed no signs of want, but every- where the most unequivocal proofs of prosperity and rapid progress in agriculture, commerce, and great public works. As these states are, some of them, en- tirely free from debt, and the rest have punctually paid the interest of Government loans, it would be most unjust to apply to them the disparaging com- ment " that it is easy to go ahead with borrowed money." In spite of the constant influx of uneducated E ill 5 I 11 1 \ if, IB t, ■n I 11 ■ r 74 ruor.uEss of civilization. Chap, hi. anl pcnnylcss adventurers from Europe, I believe it would be impossible to find five millions in any other region of the globe whose average moral, social, and intellectual condition stands so high. One con- vincing evidence of their well-being has not, I think, been sufficiently dwelt upon by foreigners : I allude to the difficulty of obtaining and retaining young American men and women for a series of years in domestic service, an occupation by no means con- sidered as degrading here, for they are highly paid, and treated almost as equals. But so long as they enjoy such facilities of bettering their condition, and can marry early, they will naturally renounce this bondage as soon as possible. That the few, or the opulent class, especially those resident in country places, should be put to great inconvenience by this circumstance, is unavoidable, and we must therefore be on our guard, when endeavouring to estimate the happiness of the many, not to sympathise too much with this minority. I am also aware that the blessing alluded to, and many others which they enjoy, belong to a pro- gressive, as contrasted with a stationary, state of society ; — that they characterize the new colony, where there is abundance of unoccui)ied hmd, and a ready outlet to a redundant labouring class. They are not the results of a democratic, as III. ClIAI'. III. rillLADELnilA. 75 , and pro- it e of olony, 1, and clasa. ic, as compared with a monarchical or aristocratic con- stitution, nor the fruits of an absohitc equality of religious sects, still less of universal suffrage. Nevertheless, we must not forget how easily all the geographical advantages arising from climate, soil, fine navigable rivers, splendid harbours, and a wilderness in the far West, might have been marred by other laws, and other political institutions. Had Spain colonized this region, how different would have been her career of civilisation I Had tlie puritan fathers landed on the banks of the Plata, how many hundreds of large steamers would ere this have been i)lying the Parana and Uruguay, — how many railway- trains flying over the Pampas, — how many large schools and universities flourishing in Paraguay! Sept. 28. — We next went by railway from New York to Philadelphia through the state of New Jersey. Large fields of maize, without the stumps of trees rising above the corn, and villas with neat flower-gardens, seemed a novelty to us after the eye had dwelt for so many hundreds of miles on native forests and new clearings. The streets of Phila- delphia rival the finest Dutch towns in cleanliness, and the beautiful avenues of various kinds of trees afford a most welcome shade in summer. We were five days here, and every night there was an alarm £ 2 ^fj •i! i! i; ill ii urn ,, h* 11- i i ii t. U. i 76 FIIIE-KNOINES. Chap. IH. t )!i , I ; t rih of fire, usually a false one ; but the noise of the fire- men was tremendous. At the head of the procession eamc a runner blowing a horn with a deep unearthly sound, next a long team of men (for no horses are employed) drawing a strong rope to which the pon- derous engine was attached with a larjje bell at the top, ringing all the way ; next followed a mob, some with torches, others shouting loudly ; and before they were half out of hearing, another engine follows with a like escort ; the whole afliiir resembling a scene in Do' Frcischutz or Robert le Diahlf, rather than an act in real life. It is, however, no sham, for these young men are ready to risk their lives in extin- guishing a fire ; and as an apology for their disturbing the peace of the city when there was no cause, wo were told " that the youth here require excitement!" They manage these matters as effectively at Boston without turmoil. 4 Chap. IV. EXCUUSION TO NEW JERSEY. 77 we CHAPTER IV. Excursion to New Jersey. — Cretaceous rocks compared to European. — General analogy of fossils, and distinctness of species. — Toiir to the Anthracite region of the Alleghanies in Penusylvania. — Long parallel ridges and valleys of these mountains. — Pottsvdle. — Absence of smoke. — Fossil phmts same as in bituminous coal. — Stigmariee. — Great thickness of strata. — Origin of Anthracite. — Vast area of the Appalachian coal-field. — Progressive debituminization of coal from icest to east. — General remarks on the different groups of rocks beticeen the Atlantic and the Mississippi. — Law of structure of the Appalachian chain discovered by the Professors Pogers. — Increased folding and dislocation of strata on the south-eastern flank of the Appalachians. — Theory of the origin of this mountain chain. Cretaceous Strata of New Jersey. Sept. 30. 1841.— From Philadelphia I made a geo- logical excursion of several days, to examine the cretaceous strata of New Jersey, in company with Mr. Conrad, to whom we are indebted for several va- luable works on the fossil shells of the tertiary, cre- taceous, and Sihirian strata of the United States. We went first to Bristol on the Delaware to visit Mr. Vanuxcm, then engaged in preparing for publication his portion of the State Survey of New York ; next by Bordentown to New Egypt, and returned by the Timber Creek, recrossing the Delaware at Camden. E 3 I 'I 4' I- 1' ' \l I I I' i I It I \ 1, 78 cki:tacec)i s strata ClIAi'. IV. Altliouy:h in this i)art of Now .Icrscv there id no white chalk witli Hints, so cliarjicteristic of rocks of this a^e in Europe, it is still impossible to glance at the fossils, ami not to be convinced that Dr. IMorton was right in referring in 1834 the New Jersey de- ])osits to the European cretaceous era. He and ]Mr. Conrad remtirked that the American species of shells were nearly all new, or distinct from those before de- scribed, and yet very analogous to those of cretaceous strata already known. The New Jersey rocks have been separated into five subdivisions, but of these two only have proved sufficiently rich in organic remains to admit of their Ijeing compared with corre- sponding strata in distant regions. The lower of these consists in great part of green sand and green marl, and was supposed by Dr. Morton to be tlio equivalent of the English " Green sand ;" while an upper or cal- careous rock, composed chiefiy of a soft straw-coloured limestone with corals, was thought to correspond with the white chalk of Europe. But after carefully com- paring my collection, comprising about 60 species of shells, besides many corals and other remains, I have arrived at the conclusion that the whole of the New Jersey series agrees in its chronological relations with the European white chalk, or, to speak more precisely, with the formations ranginfj; from the Gault to the Maestricht beds inclusive. Among the shells, in de- Chap. IV. OV NEW .TERSKY. •9 tcrmining which 1 have been assisted by Professor E. Forbes, not more than four out of sixty seem to be quite identical with European species. Tlicsc are Belemnitcs mucronatuSi Pectcn (juiufjuccostainSf Osfrai falcata ( O. larva, Goldfuss), and O. vcsicularis. Seve- ral others , however, approach very near to, and may be the same as European shells, as for example Tri- ffonia thoracica, and at least fifteen may be regarded as good geographical representatives of well-known chalk fossils, belonging, for the most part, to beds above the Gault in Europe. There are a few very peculiar forms among the American testacea, such as Tcrchratula Sayii (Morton). In the upper or straw-coloured limestone, I found, on the banks of the Timber Creek, twelve miles south- east of Philadelphia, six species of corals and several echinoderms, chieHy allied to Upper Cretaceous forms. The same calcareous stratum also abounds in forami- nifera, characteristic of the chalk, comprising, among others, the genera Cristcllaria, Rotalina, and Nodo- saria. Mr. Owen has recognised, in the fossil reptiles from New Jersey, not only the vertebra) of Mosasau- rus, previously noticed by Dr. Morton, but also the Pliosaurus, and a large crocodile of the Prococlian di- vision, or having its vertebra like the living species, with the anterior surface concave. There are also many fish of the shark family, analogous to those of E 4 80 GENERAL ANALOGY OF FOSSILS. Chap. IV. K i the English chalk, and the Galciis pristodontus is represented by a species very closely allied, if not identical. Upon the whole, the list of genera, and the forms of the species, are remarkably analogous to tie creta- ceous group of Europe ; and the agreement of four or five species of Mollusca, being in the proportion of about seven in the hundred, implies no inconsiderable amount of affinity at a distance of between 3000 and 4000 miles from the corresponding assemblage of fossils in Central and Northern Europe, especially when we recollect that there is a difference in latitude of more than ten degrees between the two districts compared. Some of the species common to the op- posite sides of the Atlantic, are those which in Europe have the greatest vertical range, as Pccten quinquecos- tatus, and which might therefore be expected to recur in distant parts of the globe. At the same time we learn from the facts above mentioned, that the marine fiiuna, whether vertebrate or invertebrate, testaceous or zoophytic, was divided at the remote epoch under consideration, as it is now, into distinct geographical provinces, although the geologist may everywhere recognise the cretaceous type, Avhether in Europe or America, and I might add, India. This peculiar type exhibits the prepon- derating influence of a vast combination of circum- V I I Chap. IV. TOUR TO THE ANTIIUACITE REGION. 81 Stances, prevailing at one period throughout the globe — circumstances dependent on the state of the physical geography, climate, and the organic world in the period immediately preceding, together with a variety of other conditions too long to enumerate here. It would not be difficult for a naturalist to point out the characters stamped on the living Flora and Fauna, by which they also might be distinguished as a whole from those of all former geological epochs. The resemblance of the corals, shells, and insects, of certain temperate regions of the southern hemisphere (Van Dieman's Land, for example), to those of the temperate zone north of the equator, or the close analogy of the arctic and antarctic fauna, the species in both cases being quite different, are illustrations of the common type here alluded to, which is evidently caused or controlled by some general law, and by some mutual relation existing between the animate creation and the state of the habitable surface at any given period. Anthracite Formation of Pennsylvania. OctSd. — Having already seen the carboniferous strata at Blossberg in Pennsylvania, where they are very slightly disturbed, and where the coal is bitumi- nous, I was desirous of examining some of the great mines of anthracite coal which occur in tlie midst of s 5 1 ii I 82 THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS. Chap. IV. I the most bent and inclined strata of the Alleghany mountains. Professor H. D. Rogers, who, with an able corps of assistants, had now nearly brought to a close his elaborate State Survey of Pennsylvania, kindly offered to be my guide, which enabled me in a comparatively short time to obtain an insight into the seolojxical structure of this chain. We first fol- lowed the course of the Schuylkill River, passing through a country moderately elevated (b, c, fig. 5. p. 92.), with hills between 200 and 300 feet above the sea, where the i*o(5ks consisted chiefly of gneiss. As we went westward we entered a belt, about twenty- five miles broad, of red sandstone and trap (New Red), similar to that before mentioned at Newhaven. Having traversed these granitic and secondary form- ations, Ave arrived at Reading, fifty-two miles N. W. of Philadel2)hia, and were then at the base of the easternmost of the great parallel ridges which con- stitute the AUeghanics or Appalachian chain of mountains. The rocks of this chain consist of the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous groups, which are folded as if they had been subjected to a g"cat lateral pressure when in a soft and yielding state, large portions having been afterwards removed by denudation. No traveller can fail to remark the lono- and uniform parallel ridges, with intervening valleys, like so many gigantic wrinkles and furrows, which mark the geographical outline of this region; and Chap. IV. POTTSVILLE. 83 these external features are found by the geologist to be intimately connected Avith the internal arrange- ment of the stratified rocks. The long and narrow ridges, rarely rising more than 2000 feet above the valleys, and usually not more than half that height, are broken here and there by transverse fissures, which give passage to rivers, and by one of which the Schuylkill flows out at Reading. The strata arc most disturbed on the south-eastern flank of the mountain chain, where we first entered, and they become less and less broken and inclined as they extend westward. After passing several belts of the inferior fossili- ferous strata, we came to the Anthracite coal-measures of Pottsville on the Schuylkill. Here I was agreeably surprised to see a flourishing manufacturing town with the tall chimneys of a hundred furnaces, burning night and day, yet quite free from smoke. Leaving this clear atmosphere, and going down into one of the mines, it was a no less pleasing novelty to find that we could handle the coal without soiling our fingers. The slow combustion of anthracite can be overcome by a strong current of air, not only in large furnaces, but by aid of a blower in the fire-places of private dwellings, and its drying effect on the air of a room may be counteracted by the evaporation of water. As managed by the Americans, I have no hesitation in £ 6 // ' 84 STIGMARIiE. Chap. IV. fei *■ t I preferring its use, in spite of the occasional stove-like heat produced by it, to that of bituminous coal in London, coupled with the penalty of living constantly in a dark atmosphere of smoke, which destroys our furniture, dress, and gardens, blackens our public buildings, and renders cleanliness impossible. In the neighbourhood of Pottsville, there are no less than thirteen seams of anthracite coal, several of which are more than two yards thick. Some of the lowest of these alternate with white grits and a conglomerate of coarser texture than I had ever seen in any pro- ductive coal-measures, some of the pebbles of quartz being of the size of a hen's egg. I was curious to know whether the Stigmariae would be found here in the underclays, as at Blossberg before-mentioned, situated 120 miles to the westward. It was easy to ascertain the fact, for several of the coal scams, from eight to ten feet thick, were quarried in the open air, and the strata being vertical, a void space was left, after the removal of the fuel, like a straight open fissure, in which we could walk, and see, in the wall on the one side, a stratum originally above, and on the other, that which had been immediately below the coal. On the former, or what is usually termed the roof, were shales with distinct impressions of ferns ; among others, the British species Pecoptcris lonchitica and Neuroptcris cordata, together with trunks and ,1 ■( IV. Chap. IV. VAST SEAM OF ANTHRACITE. 85 stems of Sigillaria, Lepidodenclron, and Calamites ; while on the opposite or south-eastern side, was an iinderclay with numerous Stigmariae, often several yards, and even in some cases thirty feet long, with their leaves or rootlets attached. In this coal field, as in all the others hitherto observed in America, particular seams of coal are found to be far more persistent than the accompany- ing beds of shale, sandstone, or limestone. As we proceeded from Pottsville, by Tamaqua, to the Lehigh Summit Mine, we found the beds of grit and 4iale gradually to thin out, so that several beds of anthracite, at first widely separated, were brought nearer and nearer together, until they united, and formed one mass about fifty feet thick, without any greater interpolated matter than two thin layers of clay with Stigmaria?. At Mauch Chunk, or the Bear INIountain, this remarkable bed of anthracite is quarried in the open air, and removed bodily to- gether with the overlying sandstone, forty feet thick, the summit of the hill being " scalped," as one of the miners expressed it. The vegetable matter, which is represented by this enormous mass of ant^iracite, must, before it was condensed by pressure and the discharge of its hydrogen, oxygen, and other volatile ingredients, have been probably between 200 and 300 feet thick. The accumulation of such a thick- ti m IS 4' '»! 1 1 fit ■■. i i' f u ■ il 86 GREAT THICKNESS OF STRATA Chap. IV. ness of the remains of plants, so unmixed with earthy- ingredients, would be most difficult to explain on the hypothesis of their having been drifted into the place they now occupy ; but it becomes intelligible if we suppose them to have grown on the spot. Whether we regard the Stigmaria? as roots, according to the opinion of M. Adolphe Brongniart and Mr. Binney, or embrace the doctrine of their being aquatic plants, no one can doubt that they at least are fossilised on the very spot where they grew ; and as all agree that they are not marine plants, they go far to establish the doctrine of the growth hi situ. of the materials of the overlying coal seams. The prodigious thickness of the carboniferous rocks in this part of the Appalachian chain, is in harmony with the theory already alluded to, which requires the repeated sinking down of many successive ter- restrial surfaces, allowing an indefinite quantity of sediment to be superimposed vertically in one con- tinuous series of beds. The surveys of Pennsylvania and Virginia show that the south-east was the quarter whence the coarser materials of the carboni- ferous rocks were derived, and there are proofs that the ancient land lay in that direction. The con- glomerate which forms the general base of the coal measures is 1500 feet thick in the Sharp Mountain, where I saw it, near Pottsville ; whereas it has only J i IV. Chap. IV. IN THE ALLEGUANIES. 87 a thickness of 500 feet, about thirty miles to the north-west, and dwindles gradually away when fol- lowed still farther in the same direction, till its thickness is reduced to thirty feet. {Rogers. Trans. Assoc. Amer. Geol, 1840-42, p. 440.) The lime- stones, on the other hand, of the coal measures, augment as we trace them westward. Similar ob- servations have been made in regard to the Silurian and Devonian formations in New York; the sand- stones and all the mechanically-formed rocks thinning out as they go westward, and the limestones thick- ening, as it were, at their expense. It is, therefore, clear that the ancient land was to the east ; the deep sea, Avith its banks of coral and shells, to the west. I at first supposed that some deception might have arisen respecting the alleged thickness of the older fossiliferous rocks of the Appalachians, owing to the dislocations and inverted position of the beds, but I was soon convinced that due regard had been paid to the apparent repetitions caused by these disturbances, and I have little doubt that those Silurian and Devonian strata, which do not exceed in their aggregate thickness a mile and a half in the State of New York, acquire more than three times that thickness in the Pennsylvanian Alleghanies. A few days' observation of the identity of the fossil plants, and the relative position of the anthracite, s \^ i I'i n ■li'i I 88 VAST EXTENT OF Chap. IV. t .1 Iff i"; ■ ji I 4' i\ i satisfied me that it was of the same age as the bituminous coal which I had seen at Blossberg. This opinion was, I believe, first promulgated by- Mr. Featherstonehaugh in 1831, at a time when many geologists were disposed to assign a higher an- tiquity to the anthracite than to the bituminous coal measures of the United States. The recent surveys have now established this fact ^beyond all question, and hence it becomes a subject of great interest to inquire how these two kinds of fuel, originating as they did from precisely the same species of plants, and formed at the same period, should have become so very different in their che- mical composition. In the first place, I may mention that the anthracitic coal-measures above alluded to, occurring in the eastern or most disturbed part of the Appalachian chain, are fragments or outliers of the great continuous coal field of Pennsylvania, Vir- ginia, and Ohio, which occurs about forty miles to the westward. This coal field is remarkable for its vast area, for it is described by Professor 11. D. Rogers as extending continuously from N.E. to S. AY., for a distance of 720 miles, its greatest width being about 180 miles. On a moderate estimate, its su- perficial area amounts to 63,000 square miles. It extends from the northern border of Pennsylvania as far south as near Huntsvillc in Alabama. Chap. IV. Chap. IV. THE APPALACHIAN COAL FIELD. 89 age as the Blossberg. nulgated by time when % higher an- bituminous The recent ; ^beyond all ect of great nds of fuel, y the same same period, n their che- may mention ) alluded to, rbed part of r outliers of >^lvania, Vir- )rty miles to kable for its Pessor 11. D. r.E. to S.AV., width being mate, its su- e miles. It msylvania as I. This coal formation, before its original limits were reduced by denudation, must have measured, at a reasonable calculation, 900 miles in length, and in some places more than 200 miles in breadth. By re- ference to the section (fig. 5., p. 92.), it will be seen that the strata of coal are horizontal to the westward of the mountain in the region D, E, and become more and more inclined and folded as we proceed eastward. Now it is invariably found, as Professor H. D. Rogers has shown by chemical analysis, that the coal is most bituminous towards its western limit, where it remains level and unbroken, and that it becomes pro- gressively debituminizcd as we travel south-eastward towards the more bent and distorted rocks. Thus, on the Ohio, the proportion of hydrogen, oxygen, and other volatile matters, ranges from forty to fifty per cent. Eastward of this line, on the Mononga- hela, it still approaches forty per cent., where the strata begin to experience some gentle flexures. On entering the Alleghany Mountains, where the distinct anticlinal axes begin to show themselves, but before the dislocations are considerable, the volatile matter is generally in the proportion of eighteen or twenty per cent. At length, when we arrive at some in- sulated coal fields (5', fig. 5.) associated with the boldest flexures of the Api)alachian chain, where the strata have been actually turned over, as near Potts- :.*%=! lriia»^ii •a c a^z; £ 5 = a. £ B = "3 tl^ I'.S B B O 'S It 3 _B d o u c« (A B .2 w U u !• C^S ^ ;c« a •I V3 I ^ •3 *C E ID S o o 01 u c in u "s _o s o 60 B u to -a o u o B 3E •* *s B< ^ C 4) JS O S rt o. o u rt "m S WM B- 3 c« i 'iS -B o *• B^g r- • 3 ** B -w V 3 2 '3 c 13 5 s > fc u i g M Ik < n u Chap. IV. THE APPALACHIAN CHAIN. 93 c o s 0) JS B n B B if I from the shores of tlic Athintic, on tho eastern fiide of the Conthicnt, we first come to a low region (a, n), which was called the alluvial plain by lUt first geogra- phers. It is occupied by tertiary and cretaceous strata nearly horizontal, and containing in general no hard and solid rocks, and is usually not more than from 50 to 100 feet high, in Pennsylvania and Virginia. In these states this zone is not many leagues in breadth, but it acquires a breadth of 100 and 150 miles in the Southern States, and a height of several hundred feet town •d'« its western limits. The next belt, from b to C, consists of granitic rocks (hypogcne), chiefly gneiss and mica-schist, covered occasionally with unconformable red sand- stone, No. 4 (New Red ?), remarkable for its ornithic- nites. Sometimes also this sandstone rests on the edges of the disturbed paleozoic rocks (as seen in the Section). The region (b, c), sometimes called the " Atlantic Slope," corresponds nearly in average width with the low and flat plain (a, b), and is characterised by hills of moderate height, contrasting strongly, in their rounded shape and altitude, with the long, steep, and lofty parallel ridges of the Alleghany mountains. The out-crop of the strata in these ridges, like the two belts of hypogcne and newer rocks (a,b, and b,c), above alluded to, when laid down on a geological map, exhibit long stripes of t t i li } X 'II :i li ! .:! 94 STRUCTURE AND ORIGIN OF Chap. IV. different colours, running in a N. E. and S. W. direction, in the same way as the lias, chalk, and other secondary formations in the middle and eastern half of England. The narrow and parallel zones of the Appalachians here mentioned consist of strata, folded into a suc- cession of convex and concave flexures, subsequently- laid open by denudation. The component rocks are of great thickness, all " referable to the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous formations. There is no principal or central axis, as in the Pyrenees and many other chains — no nucleus to which all the minor ridges conform ; but the chain consists of many nearly equal and parallel foldings, having what the geologists term an anticlinal and synclinal arrange- ment. This system of hills extends, geologically con- sidered, from Vermont to Alabama, being more than 1000 miles lonr, from 50 to 150 miles broad, and varying in height from 2000 to 6000 feet. Sometimes the whole assemblage of ridges runs perfectly straight for a distance of more than 50 miles, after which all of them wheel round together, and take a new direction, at an angle of 20 or 30 degrees to the first. Mr. R. C. Taylor had made considerable progress in unrnvelling the structure of certain portions of this chain, before the commencement of the State Chap. IV. THE APPALACHIAN CHAIN. 95 Surveys of Virginia and Pennsylvania, the former conducted by Professor W. B. Rogers, the latter by his brother. Professor H. D. Rogers, both aided by a numerous corps of assistants. To these elaborate and faithful surveys we owe the discovery of the clue to the general law of structure prevailing throughout this important range of mountains, which, however simple it may appear when once made out and clearly explained, might long have been overlooked, amidst so great a mass of comjilicated details. It appears that the bending and fracture of the beds is greatest on the south-eastern or Atlantic side of the chain, and the strata become less and less disturbed as we go westward, until at length they regain their original or horizontal position. By reference to the section (fig. 5.), it will be seen that on the eastern side, or on the ridges and troughs nearest the Atlantic, the south-eastern dips predominate, in consequence of the beds having been folded back upon them- selves, as in ?, those on the north-western side of each arch having been inverted. The next set of arches (such as h) are more open, each having its western side steepest: the next (I) opens out still more widely, the next (ni) still more, and this con- tinues until we arrive at the low and level part of the Appalachian coal field (d, e). In nature, or in a true section, the number of !. \l ■I At.'M '"> iiBWi II I 111! ,| 96 STRUCTURE AND ORIGIN OF Chap. IV. :4 W . ■ !j I • bendings or parallel folds is so much greater that they could not be expressed in a diagram without confusion. It is also clear that large quantities of rock have been removed by aqueous action or de- nudation, as will appear if we attempt to complete all the curves in the manner indicated by the dotted lines at i and k. The movements which imparted so uniform an order of arrangement to this vast system of rocks must have been contemporaneous, or belonging to one and the same series, depending on some commoL cause. Their geological date is unusually well defined. We may declare them to have taken place after the deposition of the carboniferous strata (Xo. 5.), and before the formation of the red sand- stone (No. 4.). The greatest disturbing and de- nuding forces have evidently been exerted on the south-eastern side of the chain, and it is here that igneous or plutonic rocks are observed to have invaded the strata, forming dikes, some of which run for miles in lines parallel to the main direction of the Appalachians, or N.N.E and S.S.W. According to the theory of the Professors llogers, the wave-like flexures, above alluded to, are ex- plained by supposing the strata, when in a j)lastic state, to have rested on a widely-extended surface of fluid lava, and elastic vapours and gases. The Chap. IV. THE APPALACHIAN CHAIN. 97 billowy movement of this subterranean sea of melted matter imparted its undulations to the elastic over- lying crust, which was enabled to retain the new shapes thus given to it by the consolidation of the liquid matter injected into fissures.* For my own part, I cannot imagine any real con- nection between the great parallel undulations of the rocks and the real waves of a subjacent ocean of liquid matter, on which the bent and broken crust may once have rested. That there were great lakes or seas of lava, retained by volcanic heat for ages, in a liquid state, beneath the Alleghanies, is highly probable, for the simultaneous eruptions of distant vents in the Andes leave no doubt of the wide sub- terranean areas permanently occupied by sheets of fluid lava in our own times. It is also consistent with what we know of the laws governing volcanic action to assume that the force operated in a linear direction, for we see trains of volcanic vents break- ing out for hundreds of miles along a straight line, and we behold long parallel fissures, often filled with trap or consolidated lava, holding a straight course for great distances through rocks of all ages. The causes of this peculiar mode of development are as yet obsciu'e and unexplained ; but the existence of long narrow ranges of mountains, and of great fjuilts * Trans, of Ass. of Ainer. Geol. 1840-2, p. 515 F 98 STRUCTURE AND ORIGIN OF Chap. IV. and vertical shifts in the strata proh)nged for great distances in certain directions, may all be results of the same kind of action. It also accords well with established facts to assume that the solid crust overlying a region where the subterranean heat is increasing in intensity, becomes gradually upheaved, fractured, and distended, the lower part of the newly opened fissures becoming filled with fused matter, which soon consolidates and crystallizes. These uplifting movements may be propagated along narrow belts, placed side by side, and may have been in progress simultaneously, or in succession, in one narrow zone after another. When the expansive force has been locally in operation for a long period, in a given district, there is a tendency in the subterranean heat to diminisli ; — the volcanic energy is spent, and its position is transferred to some new region. Subsidence then begins, in consequence of the cooling and shrinking of suljterranean seas of lava and gaseous matter : and the solid strata collapse in obedience to gravity. If this contraction take place along narrow and parallel zones of country, the incumbent flexible strata would be forced, in proportion as they were let down, to pack themselves into a smaller space, as they conformed to the circumference of a smaller arc. Tlie manner in which undulations may be gradually produced in i Chap. IV. THE ArrALACIIIAN CHAIN. 99 and If •allel 'ould pack 'nied pliant strata by subsidence is illustrated on a small scale by the creeps in coal-mines ; there both the overlying and underlying shales and clays sink down from the ceiling, or rise up i'rom the floor, and fill the galleries which have been left vacant by the abstraction of the fuel.* In like manner the failure of support arising from subterranean causes may enable the force of gravity, though originally exerted vertically, to bend and squeeze the rocks as if they had been subjected to lateral pressure. " Earthquakes have rais'd to heaven the humble vale, And gulplis the mountain's mighty mass entomb'd, And whei'e th' Atlantic rolls, wide continents have bloom'd." In applying these lines to the physical revolutions of the territory at present under consideration, we must remember that the continent which bloomed to the eastward, or where the Atlantic now rolls its waves (see p. 87.), was anterior to the origin of the carboniferous strata Avhich were derived from its ruins ; whereas the elevation and subsidence supposed to have given rise to the Appalachian ridges was sub- sequent to the deposition of the coal-measures. But all these 2^reat movements of oscillation were ac:ain distinct from the last upheaval which brought up the whole region above the level of the sea, laying dry i * See "Elements of Geology," by the author. vol. i. p. 110. t 2 2d ed. t!l. .„ >^! <« i'.* ■'^ f 1 100 THE APPALACHIAN CHAIN. Chap. IV. the horizontal New Red Sandstone (No. 4. fig. 5.), as well as a great part of, if not all, the Appalachian chain. The largest amount of denudation is found, as might have been expected, on the south-eastern side of the chain, where the force of expansion and con- traction, of elevation and subsidence, has been greatest. The first set of denuding operations may have taken place when the strata, including the car- boniferous, were first raised above the sea ; a second, when they sank again ; a third, when the Red Sand- stone (No. 4.), after it had been thrown down on the truncated edges of the older strata, participated in the waste. The great extent of solid materials thus removed, must add, in no small degree, to the diflfi- culty of restoring in imagination the successive changes which have occurred, and of accounting in a satisfactory manner for the origin of this mountain chain. i J Chap.v. wooded ridges of allegiianies. 101 CHAPTER V. Wooded ridges of the Alleghany Mountains German patois in Pennsylvania. — Lehigh summit Mine. — Effects of ice during a flood on the Delaicare. — Election of a governor at Trenton and at Philadelphia. — Journey to Boston. — Autumnal tints of the foliage. — Boston the seat of commerce, of government, and of a university. — Lectures at the Lowell Institute. — Influence of oral instruction in literature and science. — Fees of public lec- turers. — Educational funds sunk in costly buildings. — Ad- vantages of anti-building clauses. — Blind Asylum. — Lowell Factories. — National schools. — Equality of sects. — Society in Boston. i October 7. 1841. — TiiE steep slopes, as well as the summits of the ridges in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, are so densely covered with wood, that the surveyors were obliged to climb to the tops of trees, in order to obtain general views of the country, and construct a geographical map on the scale of two inches to a mile, on which they laid down the result of their geological observations. Under the trees, the ground is covered with the Rhododendron, Kalmia and another evergreen called Sweet Fern ( Comptonia '^fplenifoUa), the leaves of which have a very agreeable odour, resembling that of our bog-myrtle {Myrica Gale), but fainter. The leaves are so like 1. ? 3 102 LEIIIGII SUMMIT MINE. Chap. V. I I ' : * i? i ifi: ■' ! »:!' those of a fern or Pterls in form, tliat the miners call the impressions of the fossil Pecopteris, in the coal- shales " sweet-fern." We found tlie German language chiefly spoken in this mountainous region, and preached in most of the churches, as at Reading. It is fast degenerating into a patois, and it is amusing to see many Ger- manized English words introduced even into the newspapers, such as turnpelk for turnpike, y^w^c for ^id\\QQ,Jlu(icr for flour, or others, such as jail, which have been adopted without alteration. From the Lehigh Summit Mine, we descended for nine miles on a railway impelled by our own weight, in a small car, at the rate of twenty miles an hour. A. man sat in front checking our speed by a drag on the steeper declivities, and oiling tlic Avlicels without stopping. The coal is let down by the same railroad, sixty mules being employed to draw up the empty curs every day. In the evening the mules themselves arc sent down standing four abreast, and feeding out of mangers the whole way. AYe saw them start in a long train of waggons, and were told, that so completely do they acquire the notion that it is their business through life to pull weights up hill, and ride down at their ease, that if any of them are afterwards taken away from the mine and set to other occupa- tions, they willingly drag heavy loads up steep as- Chap. V. EFFECTS OF ICE DURING A FLOOD. 103 cents, but obstinately refuse to pull any vehicle down hill, coming to a dead halt at the commencement of the slightest slope. The general effect of the long unbroken summits of the ridges of the Alleghany Mountains is very monotonous and unpicturesque : but the scenery is beautiful, where we meet occasionally with a trans- verse gorge through which a large river escapes. After visiting the Beaver Meadow coal field, we left the mountains b^ one of these openings, called the Lehigh Gap, wooded on both sides, and almost filled up by the Lehigh Kiver, a branch of the Delaware, the banks of which we now followed to Trenton in New Jersey. On our way, we heard much of a disastrous flood which occurred Inst spring on the melting of the snow, and swept away several bridges, causing the loss of many lives. I observed the trees on the right bank of the Delaware at an elevation of about twenty- four feet above the present surface of the river, with their bark worn through by the sheets of ice which had been driven against them. The canal was en- tirely filled up with gravel and large stones to the level of the towing path, twenty feet above the pre- sent level of the stream, which appeared to me to be only explicable by supposing the stones to have been frozen into and carried by the floating ice. F 4 ! I ) 104 ELECTION OF GOVERNORS. Chap. V. ■.' J Oct. 11. — Reaching Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, late in the evening, we found the town in all the bustle of a general election. A new governor and representatives for the State legislature were to be chosen. As parties are nearly balanced, and the suffrage universal, the good order maintained was highly creditable. Processions, called "parades," were perambulating the streets headed by bands of music, and carrying transparencies with lights in them, in which the names of different counties, and mottoes, such as Union, Liberty, and Equality, were conspicuously inscribed. Occasionally a man called out with a stentorian voice, " The ticket, the whole ticket, and nothing but the ticket," which was fol- lowed by a loud English hurra, while at interv.als a single blow was struck on a great drum, as if to imitate the firing of a gun. On their tickets were printed the names of the governor, officers, and mem- bers for whom the committee of each party had de- termined to vote. The next day on our return to Philadelphia, we found that city also in the ferment of an election, bands of music being placed in open carriages, each drawn by four horses, and each horse decorated with a flag, attached to its shoulder, which has a gay effect. All day a great bell tolls at the State house, to re- mind the electors of their duties. It sounded like a funeral ; and on my inquiring of a bystander what it y Chap. V. JOURNEY TO BOSTON. 105 ^6 meant, one of the democratic party answered, " It is tlie knell of the whigs." In their popidar addresses, some candidates ask the people whether they will vote for the whigs who will lay on new taxes. As it is well known, that such taxes must be imposed, if the dividends on the State bonds are to be paid, these popular appeals are ominous. The rapid fall in the value of State securities shows that the public generally have no confidence that the majority of the electors will be proof against the insidious arts of these demagogues. Oct. 14. — We came from Philadelphia by New York to Boston, 300 miles, without fatigue in twenty- four hours, by rail way and steam-boat, having spent three hours in an hotel at New York, and sleeping soundly for six hours in the cabin of a commodious steam-ship as we passed through Long Island Sound, The economy of time in travelling here is truly ad- mirable. On getting out of the cars in the morning, we were ushered into a spacious saloon, where with 200 others we sat down to breakfast, and learnt witli surprise, that, while thus agreeably employed, we had been carried rapidly in a large ferry-boat without perceiving any motion across a broad estuary to Pro- vidence in the State of Rhode Island. Many trees in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, have now begun to assume their F 5 ■ "' I lOG BOSTON. CUAP. \. II 'i i t'i ) K autumnal tints, especially the maples, while the oaks retain their vivid green colour. I can only compare the brightness of the faded leaves, scarlet, purple, and yellow, to that of tulips. It is now the Indian sunnner, a season of warm sunny weather, which often succeeds to the first frost and rain, a time which the Indians employed in hunting and laying uj) a store of game for the winter. Boston^ Oct. 14. to Dec. 3. 1841. — It is fortunate that Boston is at once a flourishing connnerclal port, and the seat of the best endowed university in America, for C^unbridgc, where Harvard College is situated, is so near, that it may be considered as a suburb of the metropolis. The medical lectures, indeed, are delivered in the city, where the great hospitals are at hand. The mingling of the pro- fessors, both literary and scientific, with the eminent lawyers, clergymen, physicians, and principal mer- chants of the place, forms a society of a superior kind ; and to these may be added several persons, who, having inherited ample fortunes, have success- fully devoted their lives to original researches in history, and other departments. It is also a po- litical advantan;e of no small moment that the Icffis- lature assembles here, as its members, consisting in great part of small proprietors farming their own land, arc thus brought into contact with a com- Chap.v. Li:cTura:8 at the LOWELL institute. 107 munity in a very advanced state of civilisation, so that they are under the immediate check of an enlightened public opinion. It is far more usual to place the capital, as it is called, in the centre of the State, often in some f>niall village or town of no iuiportanco, and selected from mere geograpliical considerations, which might well be disregarded in a country enjoying such locomotive facilities. An immense sacrifice is then required from those men of independent fortune who, for patriotic motives, must leave the best society of a large city, to spend the winter in some remote spot in the discharge of public duties. I had been invited when in England by Mr. Lowell, trustee and director of a richly endowed literary and scientific institution in this city, to de- liver a course of twelve lectures on geology during the present autumn. According to the conditions of the bequest, the public have gratuitous admission to these lectures ; but by several judicious restrictions, such as requiring applications for tickets to be made some weeks before, and compliance with other rules, the trustee has obviated much of the inconvenience arising from this privilege, for it is well known that a class which pays nothing is irregular and careless in its attendance. As the number of tickets granted for my lectures amounted to 4500, and the class V G J i '' I !! li, :i '. Iff In ' 108 INFLUENCE OF ORAL INSTRUCTION Chap. V. usually attending consisted of more than 3000 per- -sons, it was necessary to divide them into two sets, and repeat to one of them the next afternoon the lecture delivered on the preceding evening. It is by no means uncommon for professors who have not the attraction of novelty, or the advantage which I happened to enjoy, of coming from a great distance, to command audiences in this institution as numerous as that above alluded to. The subjects of their dis- courses are various, such as natural history, che- mistry, the fine arts, natural theology, and many others. Among my hearers were persons of both sexes, of every station in society, from the most affluent and eminent in the various learned professions to the humblest mechanics, all well dressed and observing the utmost decorum. The theatres were never in high favour here, and most of them have been turned to various secular and ecclesiastical uses, and among others into lecture rooms, to which many of the public resort for amuse- ment as they might formerly have done to a play, after the labours of the day are over. If the selec- tion of teachers be in good hands, institutions of this kind cannot fail to exert a powerful influence in im- proving the taste and intellcvtual condition of the people, especially where college is quitted at an 1 Chap. V. IN LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 109 early age for the business of active life, and where there is always danger in a commercial community that the desire of money-making may be carried to excess. It is, moreover, peculiarly desirable in a de- mocratic state, where the public mind is apt to be exclusively absorbed in politics, and in a country where the free competition of rival sects has a ten- dency to produce not indifferentism, as some at home may be disposed to think, but too much excitement in religious matters. We are informed by Mr. Everett, late governor of Massachusetts (since minister of the U. S. in Eng- land), that before the existence of the Lowell Found- ation, twenty-six courses of lectures were delivered in Boston, without including those which consisted of less than eight lectures, and these courses were at- tended in tho aggregate by about 13,500 persons. But notwithstanding the popularity of this form of instruction, the means of the literary and scientific institutions of the city were wholly inadequate to hold out a liberal and certain reward to men of talent and learning. There were some tew instances of continuous courses delivered by men of eminence ; but the task more commonly devolved upon individuals who cultivated the art of speaking merely to become the vehicles of second-hand information, and who Q 9 ! M^T i t M i^'tmmi^tmt^^ 110 INFLUENCE OF ORAL INSTRUCTION. CuAP. V. it f; [ were not entitled to speak with authority, and from the fulness of their own knowledge.* The rich who have had a liberal education, who know how to select the best books, and can afford to purchase them, who can retreat into the quiet of their libraries from the noise of their children, and, if they please, obtain the aid of private tuition, may doubt the utiliiy of public lectures on the fine arts, history, and the physical sciences. But oral in- struction is, in fact, the only means by which the great mass of the middling and lower classes can have their thoughts turned to these subjects, and it is the fault of the higher classes if the information they receive be unsound, and if the business of the teacher be not held in high honour. The whole body of the clergy in every coinitry, and, under popular forms of government, the leading politicians, have been in all ages convinced that they must avail themselves of this method of teaching, if they would influence both high and low. No theological dogma is so abstruse, no doctrine of political economy or legislative science so difficult, as to be deemed unfit to be preached from the pulpit, or inculcated on the hustings. The invention of printing, followed by the ra[)id and general dispersion of the cheap daily Sec " Everett's Memoir of John Lowell." Boston, 1840. Chap. V. FEES OF PUBLIC LECTUREIIS. Ill newspaper, or tlic religious tract, have been by no means permitted to supersede the instrmnentality of oral teaching, and the powerful sympathy and ex- citement created by congregated numbers. If the leading patrons and cultivators of literature and physical science neglect this ready and efficacious means of interesting the multitude in their pursuits, they are wanting to themselves, and have no right to complain of the apathy or indifference of the public. To obtain the services of eminent men engaged in original researches, for the delivery of systematic courses of lectures, is impossible without the com- mand of much larger funds than are usually devoted to this object. When it is stated that the fees at the Lowell Institute at Boston are on a scale more than three times higher than the remuneration awarded to the best literary and scientific public lecturers in London, it will at first be thought hope- less to endeavour to carry similar plans into exe- cution in other large cities, whether at home or in tlie United States. In reality, however, the sum bequeathed by the late Mr. John Lowell for his foundation, though munificent, was by no means enormous, not much exceeding 70,000/., which, ac- cording to the usual fate awaiting donations for educational objects, would have been all swallowed up in the erection of costly buildings, after which !m il 112 SINKING OF EDUCATIONAL FUNDS Chap. V. ,',t i Ml '^ the learned would be invited to share the scanty leavings of the " Committee of Taste," and the mer- ciless architect, "reliquias Danaum atque immitis Achillei." But in the present case, the testator pro- vided in his will that not a single dollar should be spent in brick and mortar, in consequence of which proviso, a spacious room was at once hired, and the intentions of the donor carried immediately into effect, without a year's delay. If there be any who imagine that a donation might be so splendid as to render an anti-building clause superfluous, let them remember the history of the Girard bequest in Philadelphia. Half a million sterling, with the express desire of the testator that the expenditure on architectural ornament should be moderate ! Yet this vast sum is so nearly consumed, that it is doubtful whether the remaining funds will suffice for the completion of the palace — splendid, indeed, but extremely ill-fitted for a school-house ! It is evident that when a passion so strong as that for building is to be resisted, total abstinence alone, as in the case of spirituous liquors, will prove an adequate safeguard. In the " old country," the same fatal pro- pensity has stood in the way of all the most spirited efforts of modern times to establish and endow new institutions for the diffusion of knowledge. It is well known that the sum expended in the purchase of the Chap. V. IN COSTLY BUILDINGS. 113 ground, and in the erection of that part of University College, London, the exterior of which is nearly complete, exceeded 100,000/., one-third of which was spent on the portico and dome, or the purely orna- mental, the rooms under the dome having remained useless, and not even fitted up at the expiration of fifteen years. When the professor of chemistry enquired for the chimney of his laboratory, he was informed that there was none, and to remove the defect, a flue was run up which encroached on a handsome staircase, and destroyed the symmetry of the architect's design. Still greater was the dismay of the anatomical professor on learning that his lecture room was to conform to the classical model of an ancient theatre, desicfned for the recitation of Greek plays. Sir Charles Bell remarked that an anatomical theatre, to be perfect, should approach as nearly as possible to the shape of a well, that every student might look down and see distinctly the subject under demonstration. At a considerable cost the room was altered; so as to serve the ends for which it was wanted. The liberal sums contributed by the public for the foundation of a rival college were expended in like manner long before the academical body came into existence. When the professor of chemistry at King's College asked for his laboratory, he was told it had been entirely forgotten in the plan, but that he 114 FUNDS SUNK IN COSTLY BUILDINGS. Chap. V. might take the kitchen on the floor below, and by in- genious machinery carry np his aj)paratus for illus- trating experiments, through a traj) door into an upper story, where his lecture room was placed. Still these collegiate buildings, in support of which the public came forward so liberally, were left, like the Girard College, half finished; whereas, if the same funds had been devoted to the securing of teachers of high acquirements, station, character, and celebrity ; and if rooms of moderate dimensions had been at first hired, while the classes of pupils re- mained small, a generation would not have been lost, the new Institutions would have risen more rapidly to that high rank which they are one day destined to attain, and testamentary bequests would have flowed in more copiously for buildings well adapted to the known and ascertained wants of the establishment. None would then grudge the fluted column, the swelling dome, and the stately portico ; and literature and science would continue to be the patrons of architecture, without being its victims. Prescott, in his admirable work on the Conquest of Mexico, remarks, when discussing the extent of the ancient Aztec civilisation, that the progress made by the Mexicans in astronomy, and especially the fact of their having a general board for public edu- cation and the fine arts^ proves more in favour of MH MM Chap. V. LOWELL FACTORIES. 115 their advancement, than the noble architectural mo- numents which they and their kindred tribes erected. " Architecture," he observes, " is a sensual gratifi- cation, and addresses itself to the eye ; it is the form in which the resources of a semi-civilised people are most likely to be lavished." * Mr. John Lowell, a native of Massachusetts, after having carefully studied the educational establish- ments of his own country, visited London in 1833, and having sojourned there some months, paying a visit to the University of Cambridge and other places, he pursued his travels in the hope of ex- ploring India and China. On his way he passed through Egypt, where, being attacked, while en- gaged in making a collection of antiquities, by an intermittent fever, of which he soon afterwards died, he drew up his last wiU in 1835, amidst the ruins of Thebes, leaving half of his noble fortune for the foundation of a Literary Institute in his native city. It has already appeared how admirably he appre- ciated the exact point of " semi-civilisation " which the Anglo-Saxon race had then attained on both sides of the Atlantic. I spent an agreeable day at Cambridge, visiting several of the professors at Harvard University, and hearing one of them, Henry Ware, author of " The * Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. p. 155. i¥ 'I • ^ Ml . M u4\ I I' ! I ti ll U : 116 BLIND ASYLUM. Chap. V. Christian Character," a work reprinted, and much read in England, preach a sermon in the College Chapel. His text, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," led him to treat of self-love, and to ex- plain how this natural passion might be indulged to any extent, provided, in obedience to the divine com- mandment, our love for others increases in the like ratio. I heard afterwards, with great regret, of the death of this able and amiable man. In the Blind Asylum I saw Laura Bridgman, now in her twelfth year. At the age of two she lost her sight and hearing by a severe illness, but although deaf, dumb, and blind, her mind has been so advanced by the method of instruction pursued by Dr. Howe, that she shows more intelligence and quickness of feeling than many girls of the same age who are in full possession of all their senses. The excellent re- ports of Dr. Howe, on the gradual development of her mind, have been long before the public, and have recently been cited by Mr. Dickens, together with some judicious observations of his own. Perhaps no one of the cases of a somewhat analogous nature, on which Dugald Stewart and others have philosophised, has furnished so many new and valuable facts illus- trating the extent to which all intellectual develop- ment is dej^endent on the instrumentality of the senses in discerning external objects, and, at the same Chap. V. LOWELL FACTORIES. 117 time, in how small a degree the relative acuteness of the organs of sense determine the moral and intel- lectual superiority of the individual. Nov. 15. — Went twenty-six miles to the north of Boston, by an excellent railway, to the manufactur- ing town of Lowell, which has sprung up entirely in the last sixteen years, and now contains about 20,000 inhabitants. The mills are remarkably clean, and well warmed, and almost all for making cotton and woollen goods, which are exported to the West. The young women from the age of eighteen to twenty- five, who attend to the spinning-wheels, are good- looking and neatly dressed, chiefly the daughters of New England farmers, sometimes of the poorer clergy. They belong, therefore, to a very diflx^rent class from our manufacturing population, and after remaining a few years in the factory, return to their homes, and usually marry. We are told that, to work in these factories is considered far more elio-ible for a young woman than domestic service, as they can save more, and have stated hours of work (twelve hours a day !), after which they are at liberty. Their moral character stands very high, and a girl is paid off, if the least doubt exists on that point. Boarding- houses, usually kept by widows, are attached to each mill, in which the operatives are required to board ; the men and women being separate. This regard for ■I 118 LOWELL FACTORIES. Chap. V. I 'I is i ^ll i ^f 1 i I the welfare and conduct of the work-people when they are not on actual duty is comparatively rare in England, where the greater supply of labour would render such interference and kind superintendance much more j)i''icticable. Still we could not ex- pect that the results would be equally satisfactory with us, on account of the lower grade of the operatives, and the ignorance of the loAver classes in England. In regard to the order, dress, and cleanliness of the people, these merits are also exem- plified in the rural districts of Lancashire, and it is usually in our large towns alone, that the work people are unhealthy and squalid, especially where a number of the poor Irish live crowded together in bad dwellings. The factories at Lowell are not only on a great scale, but have been so managed as to yield high profits, a fact which should be impressed on the mind of every foreigner who visits them, lest, after admiring the gentility of manner and dress of the women and men employed, he should go away with the idea that he had been seeing a model mill, or a set of gentlemen and ladies, playing at factory for their amusement. There are few children employed, and those under fifteen are compelled by law to go to school three months in the year, under penalty of a heavy fine. If this regulation is infringed, in- Chap. V. NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 119 i4 formers arc not wanting, for there is a strong sympathy in the public mind with all acts of the legislature, enforcinjc education. The Bostonians submit to pay annually for public instruction in their city alone, the sum of 30,000Z. sterling, which is about equal to the parliamentary grant of this year (1841) for the whole of England, while the sum raised for free schools in the state this year, by taxes for wages of teachers, and their board, and exclusive of funds for building, exceeds 100,000/. sterling. The law ordains, that every district containing fifty families shall maintain one school, for the support of which the inhabitants are required to tax themselves, and to appoint committees annually for managing the funds, and choosing their own school- masters. The Bible is allowed to Ijc read in all, and is actually read in nearly all the schools ; but the law prohibits the use of books " calculated to favoiu' the tenets of any particular sect of Christians." Parents and guardians are expected to teach their own children, or to procure them to be taught, what they believe to be religious truth, and for this purpose, besides family worship and the pulpit, there are Sunday-schools. The system works well among this church-building and church-going population. As there is no other region in Anglo-saxondom, J f 120 EgUxVLITY OF SECTS. Chap. V. EJ >: 'h ,1 ■ 1 I containing 750,000 souls, where national education has been carried so far, it is inii)ortant to enquire to what combination of causes its success is mainly to be attributed. First, there is no chiss in want or extreme poverty here, partly because the facility of migrating to the west, for those who are without emi)loyment, is so great, and also, in 2)art, from the check to improvident marriages, created by the high standard of living to which the lowest workpeople aspire, a standard whicli education is raising higher and higher from day to day. Secondly, I have often heard politicians of opposite parties dccl.u'e, that there is no safety for the republic, now that the electoral suffrage has been so much extended, unless every exertion is made to raise the moral and intellectual condition of the masses. The fears entertained by the rich of the dangers of ignorance, is the only good result which I could discover tending to counterbalance the enormous prepon- derance of evil arising in the United States from so near an approach to universal suffrage. Thirdly, the political and social equality of all religious sects, ■a — a blessing which the New Englanders do not owe to the American revolution, for it was fully recog- nised and enjoyed under the supremacy of the British crown. This equality tends to remove the greatest stumbling block, still standing in the way of national ' ! msfr^r^'fmsn xmv "wywa gwgn' TiiAP. v. KQUALTTY OF SECTS. 121 instruction in Great Britain, where wc allow one generation after another of the lower classes to grow up without being taught good morals, good l)ehaviour, and the knowledge of things useful and ornamental, because we cannot all agree »^ to the precise theological doctrines in which they arc to be l)rought up. The religious toleration of the different sects towards each other in Massachusetts is, I fear, accompanied by as little Christian charity as at home, and families are often divided, and the best relations of private life disturbed, by the bitterness of sectarian dogmatism and jealousy ; but., politically, all sects are ready to unite against the end that any one sect in New England will have power to play the same game ; and these states are the chief 122 TIIANKSGIVING-DAY. Chap. V. colonizers of the West — gentiscunahula, by the rapi- dity of whose multiplication and progress in civiliza- tion the future prospects of the whole confederacy of republics will bo mainly determined. During our stay at Boston the citizens gave a splendid ball to the Prince de' Joinville, and the Mayor politely sent us tickets of invitation, which gave me an opportunity of satisfying myself that foreigners have not said too much of the beauty of the young American ladies. In general I was so much occu- pied with my lectures, or in communicating to the Geological Society of London some of the results of my observations during my late tour, that I had no time to enter into society, or to accept the hospitali- ties of the inhabitants. As soon as it was understood that I wished to live quietly, all pressing invitations were politely abstained from until I had finished my course of lectures ; and afterwards, when I found it necessary to decline a large number of them, no offence was taken. The twenty-fifth of November was appointed by the Governor of the State to be what is here called Thanksgiving-Day — an institution as old as the times of the Pilgrim Fathers, one day in the year being set apart for thanksgiving for the mercies of the past year. As a festival it stands very much in the place of Christmas Day as kept in England and Germany, being always in the winter, and every body i\\ \ m Chap. V. SOCIETY IN BOSTON. 123 jroinfr to charcli in the mornino; and meetino; in laro-c family parties in the evening. To one of these we were most kindly welcomed ; and the reception which we met with here and in the few families to which we had letters of introduction, made us entirely forget that we were foreigners. Several of our new acquaint- ances indeed had travelled in England and on the Continent, and were in constant correspondence with our own literary and scientific friends, so that we were always hearing from them some personal news of those with whom we were most intimate in Europe, and we often reflected with surprise in how many parts of England we should have felt less at home. I remember an eminent English writer once saying to me, when he had just read a recently-published book on the United States, " I wonder the author went so far to see disagreeable people, when there are so many of them at home." It would certainly be strange if persons of refined habits, even without being fastidious, who travel to see life, and think it their duty, with a view of studying character, to associate indiscriminately with all kinds of people, visiting the first strangers who ask them to their houses, and choosing their companions without re- ference to congeniality of taste, pursuits, manners, or opinions, did not find society in their own or any other country in the world intolerable. G 2 12-i SLEIGH-DRIVING AT BOSTON. CuAP. VI. CHAPTER VT. Fall of sno2v and sleigh-driving- at Boston. — Journey to New- haven. — IchthyoUtes of Durham^ Connecticut. — Age of Red Sandstone. — Income of farmers. — Baltimore.- — Washington. — National Museum. — Natural impediments to the growth of Washington. — Why chosen for the capital. — Richmond^ Vi?-ginia. — Effects of slave-labour. — Low Region on the Atlantic Border., occupied by Tertiary strata. — Infusorial bed at Richmond. — Miocene Shells and Corals in the Cliffs of the James River compared with Fossils of the European Crag and Faluns. — Analogy of forms and difference of species. — Proportion of species. — Commencement of the present Geographical distribidion of Mollu.<^ca. Nov. 29. 1841. — Although wc were in the lati- tude of Rome, and there were no mountains near us, we had a heavy fall of snow at Boston this day, fol- lowed by bright sunshine and hard frost. It was a cheerful scene to see the sleighs gliding noiselessly about the streets, and to hear the bells, tied to the horses' heads, warning the passer-by of their swift approach. As it was now the best season to geo- logise in the southern States, I determined to make a flight in that direction; and we had gone no farther than Newhaven before wc found that all the snow had disappeared. I accordingly took the opportunity when there of making a geological excursion, with m Chap. VI. ICHTHYOLITES OF DURHAM. 125 » I Mr. Silliman, jun., Professor Hubbard, and Mr. Whelpley, to examine the red sandstone strata, con- taining Ichthyolites, by the side of a small waterfall at Middlefield, one mile from Durham, in Connecticut. The remains of fish occur in a fine-grained slaty sandstone, black and bituminous, about six feet thick, which alternates with a coarse conglomerate, some of the quartz pebbles being two or three inches in dia- meter. Small fragments of fossil wood and a ripple- marked surface were observed in some of the strata near the fossil-fish. This sandstone is newer than the coal, but we have not yet sufficient data to pro- nounce very decidcv^'y it, its true age. The foot- steps of numerous spe ' . of birds afford no indication, because in Europe we have as yet no traces of birds in rocks of such high antiquity, and consequently no corresponding term of comparison. As to the fish, they have most of them been referred to the genus Paleoniscus, and have been supposed, therefore, by analogy, to imply that the Connecticut deposit is of the age of the Magnesian limestone (Lower New lied or Permian Grouj) of Europe). But Mr. Ked- field has expressed some doubt whether these Ameri- can fossils might not constitute a new, though allied genus, having the scales, and apparently the vertebra?, prolonged to a more limited extent into the upper lobe of the tail than in the European species. In o 3 126 AGE OF RED SANDSTONE. Chap. VI. the language of M. Agassiz, they are less hetero- cercal than the European Paleoiiiscus, and, therefore, less closely related to that type which is universal in the more ancient or paleozoic formations. Sir P. Egerton, who confirms these remarks of Mr. Kedfield, and adds other distinctions, such as the strong and conical teeth, and the smallness of the oral aperture, informs me that in the five or six distinct species ob- tained by me from Durham, Connecticut, he finds the scales to be smoother than in the Paleonisciof the Mag- nesian limestone ; for the latter have their scales more or less striated and serrated on the posterior margins. The American fossils approximate in the character above alluded to, or in having smooth scales, to the coal-measure species, so that the evidence derived from Ichthyology is very conflicting. Professor H. D. Kogers infers from his brother's discovery in Vir- ginia of shells in this formation, referred to the Posi- donia Keiiperiy a characteristic species of the Euro- pean Trias, that the Connecticut sandstone belongs to tiie Upper New Ked or Triassic system. In the neighbourhood of Durham we learnt that a snow-storm, which occurred there in the first week of October, had seriously injured the woods, weighing down the boughs then in full leaf, and snapping off the leading shoots. For tlie first time in the United States I heard great concern expressed •«r- w Chap. VI. INCOME OF FARMERS. 127 for the damage sustained by the timber, which is beginning to grow scarce in New England, where coal is dear. The valley of the Connecticut presents a pleasing picture of a rural population, where there is neither poverty nor great wealth. I was told by well-in- formed persons, that if the land and stock of the farmers or small proprietors were sold off and invested in securities giving six per cent, interest, their average incomes would not exceed more than from 80/. to 120Z. a year. An old gentleman who lately re-visited Durham, his native place, after an absence of twenty- five years, told me that in this interval the large families, the equal subdivision of the paternal estates among children, and the efforts made for the outfit of sons migrating to tlie West, had sensibly lowered the fortunes of the Connecticut yeomanry, so that they were reduced nearer to the condition of labourers than when he left them. Pursuing my course southwards, I found that the snow-storm had been less heavy at New York, still less at Philadelphia, and after crossing the Susque- hanna (Dec. 13.) the weather began to resemble that of an English spring. In the suburbs of Baltimore, the locomotive engines being detached., our cars were drawn by horses on a railway into the middle of the town. Maryland was the first slave state we had G 4 128 WASHINGTON. — NATIONAL MUSEUM. Chap. VI. visited ; and at Baltimore we were reminded for the first time of the poorer inhabitants of a large European city by the mean dwellings and dress of some of the labouring class, both coloured and white. At Washington I was shown the newly-founded national museum, in which the objects of natural liistorv and other treasures collected during the late voyage of discovery to the Antarctic regions, the South Seas, and California, are deposited. Such a national rej)ository would be invaluable at Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, but here there is no university, no classes of students in science or literature, no philo- sophical societies, no people who seem to have any leisure. The members of Congress rarely have town residences in this place, but, leaving their families in large cities, where they may enjoy more refined society, they live here in boarding-houses until their political duties and the session are over. If the most eminent legislators and statesmen, the lawyers of the supreme courts, and the foreign ambassadors, had all been assembled here for a great part of the year with their families, in a wealthy and flourishing metropolis, the social and political results of a great centre of in- fluence and authority could not have failed to be most beneficial. Circumstances purely accidental, and not the intentional jealousy of the democracy, have checked the growth of the capital, and deprived fji Chap. VI. WASHINGTON, WHY THE CAPITAL. 129 it of the constitutional ascendency which it might otherwise have exerted. Congress first assembled in Philadelphia, where the declaration of independence was signed ; but after the close of the revolutionary- war in June, 1783, a party of the disbanded army marched to that city to demand their arrears of pay, and surrounded the building in which the representa- tives of the people were sitting, with fixed bayonets for about three hours. This alarm caused them to adjourn and meet at Princeton, New Jersey, and afterwards to seek some other permanent seat of government. But for this untoward event, Phila- delphia might have remained the federal metropolis, and in that case would certainly have lifted up her head above other cities in the New World — " Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi." General Washington is said to have selected the present site of the capital as the most central spot on the Atlantic border, being midway between Maine and Florida, and being also at the head of the na- vigation of a great river. He had observed that all the other principal cities eastward of the Alleghany mountains had sprung up on similar sites ; but un- fortunately the estuary of the Potomac is so long and winding, that to ascend from its mouth to Washington is said often to take a vessel as long as G 5 130 RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. C HAP. VI. to cross from Liverpool to the mouth of the river. Had Annapolis, which is only thirty miles distant, been chosen as the capital, it is believed that it would, ere this, have contained 100,000 inhabitants. We were present at an animated debate in the House of Representatives, on the proposed protective tariff, and a discussion in the senate on " Ways and Means," both carried on with great order and decorum. After being presented to the President, and visiting several persons to whom we had letters, we were warned by a slight sprinkling of snow that it was time to depart and migrate further south- \vards. Crossing the Potomac, therefore, I pro- ceeded to Hichmond, in Virginia, where I resolved to sail down the James E-iver, in order to examine the geology of the tertiary strata on its shores. On entering the station-house of a railway which was to carry us to our place of embarkation, we found a room with only two chairs in it. One of these was occupied by a respectable-looking woman, who immediately rose, intending to give it up to me, an act betraying that she was English, and newly- arrived, as an American gentleman, even if already seated, would have felt it necessary to rise and offer the chair to any woman, whether mistress or maid, and she, as a matter of course, would have accepted >^l * i»* * » > ' ' — ' Chap. VI. EFFECTS OF SLAVE-LABOUR. 131 the profFcred seat. After I had gone out, she told my wife that she and her husband had come a few months before from Hertfordshu'e, hoping to get work in Virginia, but she had discovered that there was no room here for poor white people, who were despised by the very negroes if they laboured with their own hands. She had found herself looked down upon, even for carrying her own child, for they said she ought to hire a black nurse. These poor emigrants were now anxious to settle in some free state. As another exemplification of the impediments to improvement existing here, I was told that a Xew England agriculturist had bought a farm on the south side of the James river, sold off all the slaves, and introduced Irish labourers, being persuaded that their services would prove more economical than slave-labour. The scheme was answering well, till, by the end of the third year, the Irish became very much dissatisfied with their position, feeling degraded by losing the respect of the whites, and being exposed to the contempt of the surrounding negroes. They had, in fact, lowered themselves by the habitual performance of offices which, south of the Potomac, arc assigned to hereditary bondsmen. 'i' G 6 ^ 132 MIOCENE STRATA OF VIRGINIA. Chap. VI. Miocene Tertiary Strata of Virginia. Wq have already seen that between the hilly country and the Atlantic there occurs in the United States, a low and nearly level region (a, b, fig. 5. p. 92.), occupied principally by beds of marl, clay, and sand of the cretaceous and tertiary formations. Maclure, in 1817, in his work on geology, laid down with no small accuracy on a coloured map the general limits of this great plain, and of the granitic district lying inmiediately to the westward. He also pointed out that at the junction of these great geological provinces (a, b, and b, c, fig. 5.), at tlie point h, as indicated in the section, almost all the great rivers descend suddenly by falls or rapids of moderate height, as the Delaware at Trenton, the Schuylkill near Philadelphia, the Potomac near Washington, the James river at Richmond, Virginia, the Savannah at Augusta in Georgia, and many others. At these points, therefore, the navigation is stopped, and a great many large cities have sprung up precisely at this limit, so that the line which marks the western boundary of the tertiary, and the eastern of the granitic region, is one of no small geological, geographical, and political interest. The general elevation of the great plain does not exceed a hundred feet, although sometimes con- 11 Chap. VI. MIOCENE STRATA OF VIRGINIA. 133 siderably higher. Its width in the middle and southern states is very commonly from 100 to 150 miles. The tide, except in the more southern states, flows entirely across it, and the rivers intersecting it form large estuaries, which may have been due to the facility with which the incoherent materials of the cliffs were undermined and swej)t away, a process of waste which is still going on. Throughout the greater part of the Atlantic plain, the cretaceous rocks, if present, are concealed by the overlying tertiary deposits, which consist chiefly of Miocene strata, extending from Delaware bay to the Cape Fear river, and occupying portions of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, an area about 400 miles long from north to south, and varying in breadth from 10 to 70 miles. There are, besides, some patches of the Miocene form- ation in South Carolina and Georgia, where the Eocene or older tertiary depo&its predominate almost exclusively. I began my examination of these tertiary strata in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, where I saw in Shockoe creek some Eocene marls with charac- teristic shells, on which reposed Miocene red clay and sand. Between the two formations a remark- able bed of yellow siliceous clay intervenes, from twelve to twenty-five feet thick, marked on the i !f1 i ■i 134 MIOCENE STRATA OP VIRGINIA. Chap. V. surface by a band of meagre vegetation. This clay was found by Professor W. B. llogers to be en- tirely composed of the siliceous cases of Infusoriac, so minute as only to be detected by a powerful microscope, and yet exhibiting distinct specific characters, enabling us to refer them to the Miocene period. Going down the James river about twenty miles below Richmond, I found, at a place called City Point, on the right bank, a cliff thirty feet high, in which yellow and white sands appear, with shells very analogous to those of the Suffolk crag, and referable to the same age ; resting on Eocene marl and green earth. Several miles lower, at Evergreen, I collected abundance of shells in the upper or Miocene formation, with great numbers of an AstartCf resembling one of the commonest kinds of the Suffolk crag, and accompanied by the teeth of sharks, and bones of cetacea. Landing then at Coggin's Point, several miles farther eastward on the Virginian shore, I was conducted by Mr. Ruffin, son of the editor of the Farmer's Register, to a locality where shell-marl is procured and used for improving light soils, just as in Suffolk and on the Loire, strata of the same age, called crag and falun, have for cen- turies afforded a fertilizing mixture. Here, and at Evergreen before mentioned, large CiiAP. VI. IIOSriTALITY OF THE PLANTERS. 13 j flattened masses several feet wide, of a lamelliform coral resembling an Astroia, were lying on the beach, washed out of the Miocene marls. The species has l)een called by Mr. Lonsdale Cohwmat'ia scxradiata, and differs from the genus Astraja, as defined by Ehrenberg, in the stars not being subdivided. All the planters in this part of Virginia, to whoso houses I went without letters of iutroductioHj received me most politely and hospitably. To be an Englishman engaged in scientific pursuits wrs a sufficient passport, and their servants, horses, and carriages, were most liberally placed at my disposal. I then crossed to the north side of the James river being rowed out at sunrise far from the shore to wait for a steamer. The hour of her arrival bei^]g somewhat uncertain, we remained for some time in the cold, muffled up in our cloaks, in a small boat moored to a single wooden pile driven into a snoal, with three negroes for our companions. The situ- ation was desolate in the extreme, both the bank? of the broad estuary appearing low and distant, and as wild and uninhabited as when first discovered in 1G07, by Captain Smith, before he was taken prisoner, and his life saved by the Indian maiden Pocahontas. At lenofth we Qjlad^^ hailed the larjre steamer as she came down rapidly towards us, and my luggage was immediately taken charge of by lu 13G AVILLIAMSBURG. Chap. VI. two of the sable crew, who called themselves Lord WcUino-ton and Julius Ca3sar. We disembarked in a few hours near the old deserted village of Jamestown, at the Grove Landing, seven miles south of Williamsburg. Here I found the beach strewed over with innumerable fossil shells, washed out of the sandy IMiocene marls of a cliiF forty feet high. Some large varieties of the genus Pcctcn were most abundant, closely packed together in a dense bed, above which was another layer composed almost wholly of the shells of a Chama i^Ccongregata), both valves being united in each individual. From the same cliff I also procured shells of the genera Conus, Oliva, Marginellaj Fusus, Pgrula, Murcx, Natica, and others. We then visited Williamsburg, where there is a University founded by William and Mary, and therefore very ancient for this country. In the neighbourhood I procured a rich harvest of fossil shells, collecting in one morning with my own hands no less than seventy distinct species, besides several corals, in a pit at BurwcU's Mill. Upon the ^^ hole, I procured 147 species of shells, exclusive of Balani and corals, from this formation in the United States, and chiefly during the present expedition and near the banks of the James river. That they belong to the same age as the Miocene Chap. VI. MIOCENE FOSSILS. 137 deposits of Europe may be inferred: — first, from their position, as they overlie the Eocene marls containing shells, resembling those of the London and Paris basins : — secondly, from the close affinity of many of the most abundant species to fossils of the crag of Suffolk and the French faluns: — thirdly, from the proportion of the fossil shells, identical in species with mollusca, now inhabiting the American coast, the proportion being about one sixth of the whole, or about seventeen per cent, in those com- pared by me, for I have been able to identify 23 out of 147 with living shells. This relation of the fossil and recent fauna had already led Mr. Conrad and the Professors Rogers to the same conclusions, and they had correctly called these deposits Miocene. Fourthly, the corals, of which I obtained thirteen species, agree all generically with those of the Miocene beds of Europe, and some specifically, as a lunulite, the same as one from the Suffolk crag, and Anthojihyllum hreve^ common in the faluns of Tou- raine. Fifthly, the cetacea also agree generically, and the fish in many cases specifically, with Euro- pean Miocene fossils, and no remains of reptiles have been found on either side of the Atlantic in this formation. When we consider how remarkably the species of the Suffolk cracj differ from the shells of the contem- !"•;:, J \ 138 MIOCENE FOSSILS. Chap. VI. M poraneous faluns of the Loire, the geologist will not be surprised to learn that I have only met with nine American Miocene shells, agreeing with fossils of the same period in Europe. It is also worthy of notice that the shells identified with recent species agree with testacea, now living on the western side of the Atlantic, some of which, as some kinds of i^wZ^/w?', a sub- genus of Pyrula, and Gnathodon, an estuary shell, are forms peculiar to America. In like manner, the fossil shells found in the Miocene strata of Europe, which agree with recent kinds, belong to species inhabiting the British seas, the Mediterranean, or the African coast of the Atlantic. Hence it follows that at the remote period called Miocene, the seas were not only divided as now into distinct geographical provinces, but already that peculiar distribution of the living mollusca which now exists had begun to prevail. This conclusion is remarkable when we recollect that at the geological era alluded to, the fauna was so distinct from the present, that four fifths of the species now living had not yet come into existence. In regard to the climate of the Miocene period it is not uninteresting to observe that the fossil shells of Maryland and Virginia resemble those of Touraine and Bourdeaux more nearly than the fossils of Suffolk. This n ight have been expected from the nearer cor- respondence in latitude ; and it is the presence of such Chap. VI. MIOCENE FOSSILS. 139 genera as Conus, Oliva, Marffinella, and Crassatella (represented by large species), forms belonging to warmer seas, which assimilate the American and French deposits, and contrast both of them with ih'i English, where no representatives of these genera are met with. Nevertheless, it is singular that there should be so much resemblance between the Miocene shells of the Ijoire and Gironde and those of the James river and other estuaries in the United States which lie ten degrees of latitude farther south than the French faluns, the latter being in the 47th, while the American strata of the same age are in the 37 th of north latitude. This circumstance may probably be accounted for by curves in the isothermal lines similar in their prolongation east and west, to those now existing as pointed out by Humboldt, in his essay on Climate. 140 PINE BARRENS OF VIRGINIA. Chap. VII. CHAPTER VII. u li Pine Ba7're7is of Virginia and North Carolina. — Raihvai/ train stopped by snow and ice. — The Great Dismal Sivamp. — Soil formed entirely of vegetable matter. — Rises higher than the contiguous firm land. — J3uried timber. — Lake in the middle. — The origin of coal illus- trated by the Great Dismal. — Objections to the theory of ar. ancient atmosphere highly charged with carbonic acid. Dec. 23. 1841. — From Williamsburg we went to Norfolk in Virginia, passing down the James river in a steamer, and from Norfolk by railway to Weldon in North Carolina, passing for eighty miles through a low level country, covered with fir trees, and called the Pine Barrens. On our way we were overtaken by rain, which turned to sleet, and in the evening formed a coating of ice on the rails, so that the wheels of the engine could take no hold. There was a good stove and plenty of fuel in the car, but no food. After a short pause, the engineer backed the locomotive for half a mile over that part of the rail from which the snow and ice had just been brushed and scraped away by the passage of the train; then, returning rapidly, he gained sufficient momentum to carry us on two or three miles farther, Chap. VII. THE PINE BARRENS. 141 and, by several repetitions of this manoeuvre, he brought us, about nightfall, to a small watering station, where there was no inn, but a two-storied cottage not far off. Here we were made welcome, and as we had pre- viously dropped by the way all our passengers except two, were furnished with a small room to ourselves, and a clean comfortable bed. We soon made a blazing wood-fire, and defied the cold, although we could see plainly the white snow on the ground through openings in the unplastered laths of which the wall of the house was made. Before morning all the snow was melted, and we again proceeded on our way through the Pine Barrens. Our car, according to the usual construction in this country, was in the shape of a long omnibus, with the seats transverse, and a passage down the middle, where, to the great relief of the traveller, he can stand upright with his hat on, and walk about, warming himself when he pleases at the stove, which is in the centre of the car. There is often a private room fitted up for the ladies, into wliich no gentleman can intrude, and where they are sometimes supplied with rocking-chairs, so essential to the comfort of the Americans, whether at sea or on land, in a fashionable drawing-room or in the cabin of a ship. It is sin- gular enough that this luxury, after being popular 142 THE PINE BAKRENS. Chap. VII. 1;' II for ages all over Lancashire, required transplantation to the New World before it could be improved and become fashionable, so as to be reimported into its native land. The Pine Barrens, on which the long-leafed or pitch pines flourish, have for the most part a siliceous soil, and form a broad belt many hundred miles in length, running parallel to the coast, in the region called the Atlantic Plain, before alluded to. The sands, as we follow this region from New Jersey to Georgia, are derived from strata of more than one tertiary period, and there are interstratified beds of clay, which, whenever they come to the surface in valleys, cause swamps, where peculiar kinds of ever- green oaks, the cypress or cedar, tall canes, and other plants abound. Many climbers, called here wild vines, encircle the trunks of the trees, and on the banks of the Roanoke, near Weldon, I saw numerous misletoes with their white berries. The Pine Barrens retain much of their verdure in winter, and were interesting to me from the uniformity and monotony of their general aspect, for they constitute, from their vast extent, one of the marked features in the geography of the globe, like the Pampas of South America. There are many swamps or morasses in this low flat region, and one of the largest of these occurs i Chap. VII. GllEAT DISMAL SWAMP. 143 between the towns of Norfolk and Wcldon. We traversed several miles of its northern extremity on the railway, which is supported on piles. It bears the appropriate and very expressive name of the " Great Dismal," and is no less than forty miles in length from north to south, and twenty-five miles in its greatest width from east to west, the northern half being situated in Virginia, the southern in North Carolina. I observed that the water was ob- viously in motion in several places, and the morass has somewhat the appearance of a broad inundated river-plain, covered with all kinds of aquatic trees and shrubs, the soil being as black as in a peat-bog. The accumulation of vegetable matter going on here in a hot climate, over so vast an area, is a subject of such high geological interest, that I shall relate what I learnt of this singular morass. The best account yet published of it is given by Mr. Edmund Ruffin, the able editor of the Farmer's Register (see vol. iv., No. 9. January 7. 1837). It is one enormous quagmire, soft and muddy, except where the surface is rendered partially firm by a covering of vegetables and their matted roots ; yet, strange to say, instead of being lower than the level of the surrounding country, it is actually higher than nearly all the firm and dry land which en- compasses it, and, to make the anomaly complete, in i 11 144 GREAT DISMAL SWAMP. Chap. VII. spite of its semi-fluid character, it is higher in the interior than towards its margin. The only exceptions to both these statements is found on the western side, where, for the distance of about twelve or fifteen miles, the streams flow from slightly elevated but higher land, and supply all its abundant and overflowing water. Towards the north, the east, and the south, the waters flow from the swamp to diflerent rivers, which give abundant evidence, by the rate of their descent, that the Great Dismal is higher than the surrounding firm ground. This fact is also confirmed by the measurements made in levelling for the railway from Portsmouth to Suflblk, and for two canals cut through different parts of the morass, for the sake of obtaining timber. The railway itself, when traversing the Great Dismal, is literally higher than when on the land some miles distant on either side, and is six to seven feet higher than where it passes over dry ground, near to Suffolk and Portsmouth. Upon the whole, the centre of the morass seems to lie more than twelve feet above the flat country round it. If the streams which now flow in from the west, had for ages been bringing down black fluid mire, instead of water, over the firm subsoil, we might suppose the ground so in- undated to have acquired its present configuration. Some small ridges, however, of land must have CilAP.VII. SOIL FORMED OF VEGETABLE MATTER. 145 existed in the original plain or basin, for these now rise like low islands in various places above the general surface. But the streams to the westward do not bring down liquid mire, and are not charged with any sediment. The soil of tlie swamp is formed of vegetable matter, usually without any admixture of earthy particles. We have here, in fact, a deposit of peat from ten to fifteen feet in thickness, in a latitude where, owing to the heat of the sun, and length of the summer, no peat mosses like those of Europe would be looked for under ordinary circumstances. In countries like Scotland and Ireland, where the climate is damp, and the summer short and cool, the natural vegetation of one year does not rot away during the next in moist situations. If water flows into such land, it is absorbed, and promotes the vigorous growth of mosses and other aquatic plants, and when they die, the same water arrests their putrefaction. But as a general rule, no such accumulation of peat can take place in a country like that of Virginia, where the summer's heat causes annually as large a quantity of dead plants to decay as is equal in amount to the vegetable matter produced in one year. It has been already stated that there are many trees and shrubs in the region of the Pine Barrens (and the same may be said of the United States generally), which, like our willows, flourish lux- H I' 'I 146 GREAT DTS^rAL 8WA:Mr. Chap. VII. uriantly in ■water. The juniper trees, or white cedar ( Ciiprcssus thi/oifles), stand firmly in the softest part of the quagmire, supported by tlieirlong tap-roots, and afford, with many other evergreens, a dark shade, under wdiich a multitude of ferns, reeds, and shrubs, from nine to eighteen feet high, and a thick carpet of mosses, four or five inches high, spring up and arc protected from the rays of the sun. "VYhen these are most powerful, the large cedar {Ciiprcssus disticha) and many other deciduous trees arc in full leaf. The black soil formed beneath this shade, to which the mosses and the leaves make annual additions, does not perfectly resemble the peat of Europe, most of the plants being so decayed as to leave little more than soft black mud, without any traces of organ- ization. This loose soil is called sponge by the labourers; and it has been ascertained that, when exposed to the sun, and thrown out on the bank of a canal, where clearings have been made, it rots entirely away. Hence it is evident that it owes its preservation in the swamp to moisture and the shade of the dense foliage. The evaporation continually going on in the wet spongy soil during summer cools the air, and generates a temperature resembling that of a more northern climate, or a region more elevated above the level of the sea. Numerous trunks of larnje and tall trees lie buried CnAP.VII. GREAT DISMAL SWA:\ir. 147 ill the black mire of tlie morass. In so loose a soil they are easily overthrown by winds, and nearly as many have been found lying beneath the surface of tlie peaty soil as standing erect upon it. When thrown down, they are soon covered by water, and keej^ing wet they never decompose, except the sap wood, whicli is less than an inch thick. Much of the timber is obtained by sounding a foot or two below the surface, and it is sawn into planks while lialf under water. The Great Dismal has been described as bcino; highest towards its centre. Here, however, there is an extensive lake of an oval form, seven miles long, and more than five wide, the depth, where greatest, fifteen feet ; and its bottom, consisting of mud like the swamp, but sometimes with a j)ure white sand, a foot deep, covering the mud. The water is trans- parent, though tinged of a pale brown-colour, like that of our peat-mosses, and contains abundance of fish. This sheet of water is usually even with its banks, on -which a thick and tall forest grows. There is no beach, for the bank sinks perpendicularly, so that if tlie waters are loAvcred several feet it makes no alteration in the breadth of the lake. INIuch timber has been cut down and carried out from the swamp by means of canals, which are per- fectly straight for long distances, with the trees on H 2 148 OllIGIX OF COAL. Chap. VII. |5 each sitle arching over and ahiiost joining their branches across, so that they throw a dark shade on the water, wliich of itself looks black, being coloured as before mentioned. When the boats emerge from the gloom of these avenues into the lake, the scene is said to be " as beautiful as fairy land." The bears inhabiting the swamp climb trees in search of acorns and gum berries, breaking off large boujrhs of the oaks in order to draw the acorns near to them. Tliese same bears arc said to kill hogs and even cows. There are also wild cats, and occa- sionally a solitary wolf, in the morass. That the ancient seams of coal were produced for the most \)avt by terrestrial plants of all sizes, not drifted, but growing on the spot, is a theory more and more generally adopted in modei.*n times, and the growth of what is called sponge in such a swamp, and in such a climate as the Great Dismal, already covering so many square miles of a low level region bordering the sea, and capable of spreading itself in- definitely over the adjacent country, helps us greatly to conceive the manner in which the coal of the ancient Carboniferous rocks may have been formed. The heat, perhaps, may not have been excessive when the coal measures originated, but the entire absence of frost, with a warm and damp atmosphere, may have enabled tropical forms to flourish in Chap. VII. OIUOIN OF COAL. 149 latitudes far distant from the line. Huge swamps in a rainy climate, standing above the level of the surrounding firm land, and supporting a dense forest, mny have spread far and wide, invading the plains, like some European peat-mosses wlien they burst ; and the frequent submergence of these masses of vegetable matter beneath seas or estuaries, as often as the land sunk down during subterranean move- ments, may have given rise to the deposition of strata of mud, sand, or limestone, immediately upon the vegetable matter. The conversion of successive surfaces into dry land, where other swamps sup- porting trees may have formed, might give origin to a continued series of coal-measures of great thickness. In some kinds of coal, the vegetable texture is apparent throughout under the microscope ; in others, it has only partially disappeared; but even in this coal the flattened trunks of trees of the genera Lepidodenilroriy Sif/illaria, and others, con- verted into pure coal, are occasionally met with, and erect fossil trees are observed in the overlying strata, terminatin '2 152 ATMOSPHERE OF CARBONIC ACID. Chap. YII. have thus been gmdually formed in the sea, any- essential change in the chemical composition of its waters has been brought about. AYe have no accurate data as yet for measuring wliether in our own time, or at any remote geological era, the relative supply and consumption of carbon in the air or the ocean causes the amount of those elements to vary greatly ; but the variation, if admitted, would not have caused an excess, but rather a deficit of carbon in the pe- riods most jiroductive of coal or peat, as compared to any subsequent or antecedent epochs. In fact, a climate favouring' the rank and luxurious o'rowth of plants, and at the same time checking their decay, and giving rise to peat or accunmlations of vegetable matter, might, for the time, diminish the average amount of carbonic acid in the atmosphere — a state of things precisely the reverse of that assumed by those to whose views I am now objecting. 1 l#^*/'« (!»««)•-* '*-' •■*•• •-••— ■^.«'— .^^f Chap. VIII. TOUR TO CIIAKLESTON. 153 CHAPTER VIII. Tour to Charleston:, South Carolina. — Facilities of Locomotion. — Augusta. — Voyage doivn the Savannah River. — Shell Bluff. — Slave-Labour. — Fever and Ague. — Millhaven. — Pine Forests of Georgia. — Alligators and Land- Tortoises. — Wa7'mth of Climate in January. — Tertiary Strata on the Savannah. — Fossil Remains of Mastodon and Mylodon near Savannah. — Passports required of Slaves. — Cheerfulness of the Negroes. Dec. 28. — Charleston, South Carolina. AVe arrived here after a journey of 160 miles through the pine forests of North Carolina, between Welclon and Wihnington, and a voyage of about 17 hours, in a steam ship, chiefly in the night between Wihuington and this place. Here we find ourselves in a genial climate, where the snow is rarely seen, and never lies above an hour or two upon the ground. The rose, the narcissus, and other flowers, are still lingering in the gardens, the woods still verdant with the magnolia, live oak, and long-leaved pine, while the dwarf fan pahn or j)almctto, frequent among the underwood, marks a more southern region. In less than four weeks since we left Boston, we have passed from the 43d to the 33d degree of latitude, carried often by the power of steam for several hundred miles H 5 v 154 FACILITIES OF LOCOMOTION. Chap. VIII. together through thinly iicoplecl wildernesses, yet sleeping every night at good inns, and contrasting the facilities of locomotion in this new country with the difficulties we had contended with the year before when travelling in Europe, through populous parts of Touraine, Brittany, and other provinces of France. At Charleston I made acquaintance with several persons zealously engaged in the study of natural history, and then went by an excellent railway 136 miles through the endless pine woods to Augusta, in Georgia. This journey, which would formerly have taken a week, was accomplished between sunrise and sunset ; and, as wo scarcely saw by the way any town or village, or even a clearing, nor any human habitation except the station houses, the spirit of en- terprise displayed in such public works filled me with astonishment which increased the farther I went South. Starting from the sea-side, and imagining that we had been on a level the whole way, wc were surprised to find in the evening, on reaching the village of Aikin, sixteen miles from Augusta, that wc were on a height several hiuidred feet above the sea, and that wc had to descend a steep inclined plane to the valley of the Savannah river. The strata cut througli here in making the railway consist of vermilion-coloured earth and clay, and white quartzosc sand, with masses of pure Avhite kaolin intermixed. These Chap. VIII. AUGUSTA. 155 strata belong to the older or Eocene tertiary form- ation, which joins the clay-slate and granitic region a few miles above Augusta, where I visited the rapids of the Savannah. I liad been warned by my scientific friends in the North, that the hospitality of the planters might greatly interfere with my schemes of geologizing in the Southern states. In the letters, therefore, of introduction furnished to me at Washington, it was particularly requested that information respecting my objects, and facilities of moving speedily from place to place, should be given me, instead of dinners and society. These injunctions were every where kindly and politely complied with. It was my intention, for the sake of getting a correct notion of the low country between the granitic region and the Atlantic, to examine the cliffs bounding the Sa- vannah river from its rapids to near its mouth, a distance, including its windings, of about 250 miles. After passing a few days at Aiigusta, where, for the first time, I saw cotton grov/ing in the fields, I em- barked in a steam boat employed in the cotton trade, and went for foity miles down the great river, which usually flows in a broad alluvial plain, with an average fall of about one foot per mile, or 250 feet between Augusta and the sea. Like tlie Mississippi and all Ira'ge rivers, which, in the flood H 6 i| ■p/'i' .1 If I 156 SHELL BLUFF. Chap. VIII. season^ are densely charged with sediment, the Savannah has its immediate banks higher than the plain intervening between them and the high grounds beyond, whicl.' usually, however distant from the river, jiresent a steep cliff or "bluff" towards it. The low flat alluvial plain, overflowed in great part at this rainy season, is covered with aquatic trees, and an ornamental growth of tall canes, some of them reaching a height of twenty feet, being from one to two inches in diameter, and with their leaves still green. The lofty cedar (^Cupressus disticha\ now leafless, towers above them, and is remarkable for the angular bends of the top boughs, and the large thick roots which swell out nenr the base. I landed first at a cliff about 120 feet high, called Shell Blufl", from the large fossil oysters which are conspicuous there. About forty miles below Augusta, at Demery's Ferry, the place where we disembarked, the waters were so high that we were carried on shore by two stout negroes. In the absence of the proprietor to whom I had letters, Ave were hospitably received by his overseer, who came down to the river Ijank, with two led horses, on one of which Avas a lady's saddle. He conducted us through a beautiful wood, where the verdure of the evergreen oaks, the pines, and hollies, and the mildness of the air, made it diflicult for us to beneve ill Chap. VIII. SLAVE L ABO UK. 157 that it was mid-winter, and that we had been the month before in a region of snow storms and sledges. We crossed two creeks, and after riding several miles reached the house, and were shown into a spacious room, where a great wood fire was kept up constantly on the hearth, and the doors on both sides left open day and night. Heturning home to this hospitable mansion in the dusk of the evening of the day following, I was sur- prised to see, in a grove of trees near the court-yard of the ftirm, a large wood-fire blazing on the ground. Over the fire hung three cauldrons, filled, as I after- wards learned, with hog's lard, and three old negro women, in their usual drab-coloured costume, were leaning ovev the cauldrons, and stirring the lard to clarify it. The red glare of the fire was reflected from their faces, and I need hardly say how much they reminded me of the scene of the witches in Macbeth. Beside them, moving slowly backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair, sat the wife of the overseer, muffled up in a cloak, and suffering from a severe cold, but obliged to watch the old ^4aves, who are as thoughtless as children, and might spoil the lard if she turned away her head for a few minutes. When I inquired the meaning of this ceremony, I was told it was " killing time," this being the coldest season of the year, and that since I left the farm in a 158 SLAVE LABOUR. Chap. VIII. the morning thirty hogs had been sacrificed by the side of a runnino; stream not far off. These were destined to serve as winter provisions for the ne- groes, of whom there were about a hundred on this plantation. To supply all of them with food, clothes, and medical attendants, young, old, and impotent, as well as the able-bodied, is but a portion of the expense of slave-labour. They must be continually superintended by trustworthy whites, who might often perform no small part of the task, and far more effectively, with their own hands. I fossilized for three days very diligently at Shell Bluff, obtaining more than forty species of shells, chiefly casts, referable to ""he Eocene formation ; of which I shall speak by-and-Ly. Resuming our voyage, thirty miles further down the river, in another large cotton steam-boat, we were landed at Stony Bluff, in Georgia, where I wished to examine the rocks of burr-stone. There was no living being or hal)itation in sight. The large steamer vanished in an instant, sweeping down the swollen river at the rate of seventeen miles an hour, and it seemed as if we had been dropped down from a balloon, witli our luggage, in the midst of a wilderness. I began by exercising my hammer on the burr-stone of this low bluff; a cellular kind of flint, sometimes used for millstones, and full of silicified b I CUAP. VIII. FEVER AND AGUE. 159 corals and minute shells, and, as I afterwards found, by aid of a powerful microscope, of sponges. It is an Eocene formation, and alternates with beds of red loam. After making a collection of specimens, I walked about the wood, and found a lone house, at the door of which a woman was sitting, in a languid state of health. She said she had just recovered from the fever, or chill ; and among other inquiries, asked when we had last had this complaint. On being told we had never had it, she said, " I should like to live in your country, for among the Whites there is not one in this section of Georgia that has escaped." It is true, that consumption, so common in the Northern states, and so often fatal, is unknown here ; but the universality of the ague makes these low districts in the Southern states most unenviable dwelling-places. The best season for a geological tour in this part of Georgia and South Carolina, east of the mountains, is from December to April inclusive. I waited for the return of the owner of the lone house, and told him I wished to visit the plantation of Colonel Jones, at Millhaven. lie consented to let me hire his barouche with one horse, telling me I must send it back the best way I could, after find- in;^' my own way for twelve miles through the pine- forest, as he could spare me no driver. The lanes through tlie wood were numerous, and a storm had I * liii' mi IGO riXE FOllESTS OF GEOllGIA. Cuap. VIII. blown down so many tall jnues across the roacl, each of which it was necessary to circiininavigatc, that wc thouirht ourselves fortunate when we arrived safe at the destined haven. My new host added to the kindness and frankness of a Southern planter, what I * had little expected in the midst of this foiCc:, a strong love for my favou vite pursuits, and guided me at once to Jacksonborough, and other neighbouring places, best worthy the attention of a geologist. We had many long rides together through those woods, there being no underwood to prevent a horse from galloping freely in every direction. The long- leaved pines emit a faint odour somewhat resembling that of the hyacinth, and their bright-green foliage was finely brought out against the clear blue sky. The air was balmy, and unusually warm, even for Georgia in the first week of January. Wc saw se- veral butterflies, one of a bright yellow colour, and bats flying about in the evening. The croaking of the frog and the chirping of the cricket were again heard. They had been silent a few days before, when the air was cooler. The sheep which remain out in these woods all the winter, are now fol- lowed by lambs about three weeks old. I saw many black squirrels here, but only heard of the opossum, racoon, bear, and alligator, without seeing any. A few days ago, an alligator was shot fourteen feet V I Cn.vp. VIII. LAND TOmOISE. 161 long, In the act of carrying off a pig; and tlic sports- men complain to me tliat they devour their dogs ■\vlicn they follow the deer, which, on the first alarm, usually take to the Savannah river. I frequently observed the holes of the gopher, a kind of land-tortoise, whidi burrows in the sand, and is now hybernating below ground. Four or fi^•e in- liabit one hole : their enfji's are rather smaller tlian a hen's. Tliey are gregarious, and in summer are seen feeding ten or twelve togetlier on the low shrubs. They are said to be very strong for their size, and a negro-woman assured a lady of our party that she was so light that she might be " toted by a gopher." We also saw small hillocks, such as are thrown up by our moles, made by a very singular ani- mal, which they call a salamander, because, I believe, it is often seen to appear when the woods are burnt. It is not a reptile, but a species of rat (^Pseudostoma pinetorum), with pouches on its cheeks. On quitting Millhaven, instead of continuing my voyage down the river, I hired a carriage to convey us to the town of Savannali, a distance of nearly one hundred miles. Here and there I went down from the high road to examine the river-cllfts, consisting of bright red-coloured loam, red and grey clay, and white sand. At Hudson's Reach and other points I found Eocene shells and fishes' teeth, chiefly of the IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 ■JO ^^" W^l m ^U4 12.2 lU _ «t I u u ^ ■UUU Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WIST MAIN STMET WEBSTIR.N.Y. MSSO (716) S73-4S03 f1 162 T L R KE Y-B U ZZ AK DS. Chap. VIII. ! I ii I genera MijUohates and Lamna. One day, on return- ing from the river, I came suddenly in the wood on some turkey-buzzards feeding on a dead hog. I had often seen since we crossed the Potomac these large black and grey birds soaring at a great height in the air, but I was now surprised to see one of them perch on a stump a few yards from me, and seem perfectly fearless. In our last day's journey, I remarked, for the first time in America, a large flight of I'ooks, some wheeling about in the air, others perched on trees. Near the village of Ebenezer we passed over a long causeway, made of logs, which for three quarters of a mile was under water. The tall cedars (^Cu~ jyressits disficha), and other trees arching over and forming a long aisle, reminded me exactly of the de- scriptions given of the canals in the Great Dismal Swamp. Some of the myrtles in these wet grounds are very fragrant. We were pursuing a line of road not much fre- quented of late, since the establishment of the rail- way from Augusta to Charleston. Our arrival, therefore, at the inns was usually a surprise, and in- stead of being w^Vomed, we were invariably recom- mended to go on ff rther. When once admitted, we were made very comfortable, having <.uv meals with the family, and being treated more like guests than Chap. VIII. ARRIVAL AT SAVANXAII. 1G3 '">« ciistoiners. On one occasion our driver, to whose brotlier our carriage and horses belonged, fell in with the son of a neighbouring planter, who reproached him in a friendly manner for not having come to his house tlie night before, and brought us with him. The social equality which prevails here arises not so much from the spirit of a republican government, as from the fact of the whites constituting an aristocracy for whom the negroes work. Had we availed ourselves of letters of introduction freely offered to us, we might have passed from the house of one hospitable planter to another, and heard as little of reckonings at inns as Don Quixote expected, after his study of tlie histories of knights errant. Jan. 10. 1842. — On the tenth day after leaving Augusta, we arrived at Savannah, from whicli town I immediately set out on an excursion through a flat, swampy country, resembling a large delta, to Beauly and the Vernon river, about fifteen miles to the south-east. I went by Heyner's Bridge, on the White Bluff creek, to see a spot about twelve miles from Savannah, where I had learnt from Dr. Haber- sham that bones of the mastodon and other extinct mammalia had been discovered. The bed of clay, about six feet thick, containing them, can only be seen at low water, and I descended to it in a boat when the tide was out ; and by the aid of the negroes, 164 FOSSIL REMAINS. Chap. VIII. obtained the grinder of the common American mas- todon. The stratum enclosing these and other bones rests immediately on sand containing marine shells of living species, and is covered by the mud of a fresh- water swamp, in which trees grow, and when thrown down by the winds, become occasionally imbedded. One of the teeth given to me from this place by Dr. Habersham Avas ascertained, by IMr. Owen, to be referable to his new genus, Mijloclon. INIr. Hamilton Couper afterwards sent me from a similar geological position, farther south in Georgia, near the mouth of the Alatamaha, the tooth of a megatherium. It is evident, from his observations and my own, that at a comparatively recent period since the Atlantic was inhabited by the existing species of marine testacea, there was an upheaval and laying dry of the bed of the ocean in this region. The new land supported forests in which the megatherium, mylodon, mastodon, elephant, a species of horse different from the com- mon one, and other quadrupeds, lived, and were oc- casionally buried in the swamps. There have also been subsidences on the coast, and perhaps, far in- land; for in many places near the sea there arc signs of the forest having become submerged, the remains of erect trees being seen enveloped in stra- tified mud and sand : I even suspect that this coast is now sinking down, at a slow and insensible rate, ^ CllAP. VIII. FOSSIL REMAINS. IGj for tlie sea Is encroaching and gaining at many points on the frcsli-water marches. Thus at Bcauly I found upright stumps of trees of the pine, cedar, and ilex covered with live oysters and barnacles, and exposed at low tide ; the deposit in which they were buried having been recently washed away from around the ii by the waves. I also observed, that the flat country of marshes was bounded on its western or inland side by a steep bank or ancient cliff cut in the sandy ter- tiary strata, and there are other inland cliffs of the same kind at diflerent heights implying the suc- cessive elevation above the sea of the whole tertiary region. Not only in South Carolina and Georgia, but also in the low region of North Carolina, as for example, fifteen miles below Newberne, the remains of extinct quadrupeds have been met with. The tootli of a horse found in the latter place, with the bones of mastodon, elephant, and other mammalia, was pre- sented to me by INIr. Conrad, remarkably curved, and agreeing, in this respect, with a fossil tooth discovered by Mr. Darwin on the north side of the Plata, in Entrc Rios, in South America, where it accompanied the mastodon and megatherium. As no species of equus existed in the New World when it was dis- covered in the fifteenth century, naturalists were in- clined, at first, to be incredulous in regard to the 1G6 FOSSIL RKMAINS. Chap. VIII. real antiquity of this fossil ; but as the tooth is more curved than in the recent horse, ass, or zebra, the fossil species may have difFered as widely from any living representative of this genus, as the zebra or wild ass from the horse of Arabia. It is a fact well worthy of attention that in the southern states of the Union so many extinct qua- drupeds, such as the mastodon, elephant, megathe- rium, mylodon, and horse, should occur, agreeing, some specifically and others in generic characters, with those found in corresponding latitudes in South America near the river Plata, and in Patagonia, or between latitudes 31° and 50° S., and that in both hemispheres they should be accompanied by marine fossil shells of recent species, as Mr. Darwin has shown to be the case in the Pampas. Yet, although these quadrupeds arc so modern, geologically speaking, as to have co-existed with the present testaceous fauna, we cannot attribute their extermination to the agency of man ; for it is not the huge beasts alone, but qua- drupeds as small as the rat, which have become ex- tinct in South America within the same period, as Mr. Lund, the Danish naturalist, has shown in re- ference to Brazil. On the beach at Beauly I saw numerous foot- tracks of racoons and opossums on the sand, which had been made during the four hours inmiediatcly Chap. VHL LAND CUAIJS. If) u prccciling, or si'incc the ebbing of the tklo. Ahvady sonie of them were lialf filled with fine blown yantl, showing the process by which distinct casts may be formed of the footsteps of animals in a stratum of quartzose sandstone. I remarked that the tracks of the racoons could be traced at several jioints to beds of oysters, on which these animals are said to feed. The negroes told me, that sometimes a large oyster closes his shell suddenly, and holds the racoon fast by his paw till the returning tide comes up and drowns him. The surface of the beach for half a mile was co- vered with small round pellets of mud as thick as hailstones, of the size of currants and peas, and arranged for the most part in small heaps. These arc made by thousands of land crabs {^Gclasimus vo- cans ?), which they call fiddlers, because the motion of their claws is compared to the arm of a player on the violin. By the side of each heap was a per- pendicular hole several inches deep, into which when alarmed the crab retreats sideways, sometimes dis- appearing, but often leaving the larger claw pro- jecting above for want of room. They make these holes by rolling the wet sand into pellets, and then bringing up each ball separately to the surface. A planter of this country told me it was amusing to see a flock of turkies driven down for the first 1 168 TASSrORTS IIEQUIUED FOR SLAVES. CirAP.VIir. time from the interior to feed on the crabs in the marine marshes. Tliey, at first, walk about in a ludicrous state of alarm, expecting their toes to bo pinched, but after a time, one bolder than the rest is tempted by hunger to snap up a small fiddler, after which the rest fall to and devour them by thousands. On my way through the woods in this low region near Savannah, I saw some fine magnolias ninety feet high, pahnettos six feet high in tufts, and oaks hung with white pendant wreaths, sometimes ten feet long, of the wiry parasitic Tillandsia usna3oides. This climber, which also festoons the woods in South America, much resembles the lichen called in England '' old man's beard," but is a phenogamous plant. In order to sec the bed of clay containing the bones of the mastodon at Heyner's Bridge, it was necessary for me to be on the ground by daybreak at low tide. With this view, I left Savannah in the middle of the night. The owner of the property kindly lent me his black servant as a guide, and I found him provided with a passport, without which no slave can go out after dusk. The exact streets through which he was to pass in his way to me were prescribed, and htid he strayed from this route he might have been committed to the guard-house. These and other precautionary regulations, equally irksome to the slaves and their masters, are said to Chap. VIII. CTTEERF[TLXESS OF NEGROES. IGl) have become necessary after an insurrection brought on by abolitionist missionaries, who arc spoken of here in precisely the same tone as incendiaries, or beasts of prey whom it would be meritorious to shoot or hang. In this savage and determined spirit I heard some planters speak who were mild in their manners, and evidently indulgent to their slaves. Nearly half the entire population of this state are of the coloured race, who are said to be as excitable as they are ignorant. Many proprietors live with their wives and children quite isolated in the midst of the slaves, so that the danger of any popular movement is truly appalling. The negroes, so far as I have yet seen them, whe- ther in domestic service or on the farms, appear very cheerful and free from care, better fed than a large part of the labouring class of Europe ; and, though meanly dressed, and often in patched garments, never scantily clothed for the clinuite. We asked a woman in Georgia, whether she wfti the slave of a family of our acquaintance. She replied, merrily, " Yes, I belong to them, and they belong to me." She was, in fact, born and brought up on the estate. On another occasion we were proceeding in a well- appointed carriage with a planter, when we came unexpectedly to a dead halt. Inquiring the cause, the black coachman said he had dropped one of his 170 NEGRO COACIIMAX. ClIAI'. VIII. white gloves on the road, and must drive hack and try to find it. He could not recollect witliin a mile where he had last seen it : we remonstrated, hut in vain. As time pressed, the master in despair took off his own gloves, and, saying he had a second pair, gave them to him. When our charioteer had de- liberately put them on, we started again. Chap. IX. IIETURN TO CHARLESTON. 171 CHAPTER IX. Return to Charleston. — Fossil human skeleton. — Geographical distribution of quadrupeds in North America. — Seccre frost in 1835 in South Ca7'olina. — White limestone of the Cooper River and Suntce Canal. — Referred to the Eocene period., not intermediate between tertiary and chalk. — Lime- sinks. — Species of shells common to Eocene stnda in America and Europe. — Causes of the increased insalnbrity of the low region of South Carolina. — Condition of the slave popidation. — Cheerfulness of the negroes : their vanity. — State of animal existence. — Invalidity of marriages. — The coloured population multiply faster than the ichites. — Effects of the interference of abolitionists. — Laivs against education. — Gradual emancipation equally desirable for the ivhites and the colow'ed race. Jan. 13. 1842. — From Savannah we returned to Charleston in a steam-ship, on board of which we found an agreeable party, consisting chiefly of officers of the U. S. army returning from Florida, where they had nearly brought to a close a war of extermina- tion carried on for many years against the Seminole Indians. They gave a lively picture of the hardships they underwent in the swamps and morasses during this inglorious campaign, in the course of which the lives of perhaps as many whites as Seminoles were sacrificed; The war is said to have been provoked by the attacks of the Indians on new settlers. I 2 V' 172 FOSSIL HUMAN SKELETON. CUAV. IX. I f Tn tlic Musciun at Charleston, I was slmwn a fossil liunian skull from (fua(lalouj)Cj iinbakletl in solicl limestone, which they say hclongs to the same skeleton of a female as that now preserved in the British INIuseum, where the skull is wanting. Dr. l>achman whom I saw here is cng;nge(l in a great work on the quadrupeds of North Ameriea. lie pointed out to me the boundary of several distinct zones of indigenous mammalia, extending eastand west on this continent, Avhere there are no great natural barriers running in the same direction, such as moun- tain ridges, deserts, or wide arms of the sea to check the migrations of species. The climate alone has been sufficient to limit their range. The mammiferous fauna of the State of New York, comprising about forty species, is distinct from that of the arctic region 600 miles north of it, and described by Dr. Richard- son. It is equally distinct from that of South Ca- rolina and Georgia, a territory about as far distant to the south. In Texas, where frosts arc unknown, another assemblage of species is met with. The opos- sum, for example, of that country {Didelphis cancri- vora) is different from that of Virginia. The latter (^Didelphis virginiana) is one of those species which is common to many provinces, extending from Florida as far north as Pennsylvania, where it has been ob- served while the snow was lying two feet deep on i-i Chap. IX. SEVERE FIIOST. 173 the ground. The racuou luus u still wider habitation, ranging aa did the biifi'alo originally {Bison ameri' catiu.s) from the north of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. 13ut these are exceptions to the general rule. Similar restrictions seem to have prevailed in the era of extinct quadrupeds, the great mastodon {M. gi(janteus) having evidently abounded in Canada and New York, as well as Kentucky and Georgia, while the megatherium and mylodon were almost entirely confined to the southern Stjites. When discoursing here on the influence of climate, many accounts were given me of a frost which vi- sited Charleston in February, 1835, so severe that wine was frozen in bottles. The tops of the Pride- of- India tree, of Chinese origin, were killed : all the oranges, of w hlch there were large orchards, were de- stroyed. Beds of oysters, exposed between high and low water mark, perished in the estuaries, and the effluvia from them was so powerful as to injure the health of the inhabitants. Several planters attribute the failure of the cotton crop this year (1842) to the unusual size and number of the icebergs, which floated southwards last spring from Hudson's and Baffin's Bays, and may have cooled the sea and checked the early growth of the cotton plant. So numerous and remote are the disturbing causes in meteorology ! Forty degrees of latitude I 3 ^ "X s i u 174 TEUTIAIIY FORMATIONS. Chap. IX. intervene between the region where the ice-floes are generated and that where the crops are raised, whose death-warrant they are supposed to have carried with them. Before I visited the southern States, I had heard from several American geologists that calcareous rocks occurred there intermediate in age between the chalk and the tertiary formations, and helping to fill the void which separates those two well-marked eras in the European series. Having satisfied myself that all the white limestone of the Savannah river was referable to the Eocene epoch, I now set out to de- termine whether the same could be said of that ex- posed to view on the Cooper river and Santee canal, about thirty miles north of Charleston. I was ac- companied in an excursion of a week by Dr. Ravenel, who kindly oifered to be my guide ; and we first vi- sited a plantation of his, called " The Grove," near the mouth of the Cooper river, where, in the marshes, there are deep deposits of clay and sand, enclosing the stools and trunks of the cypress, hiccory, and cedar, often imbedded in an erect position, which must have grown in fresh water, but are now sunk six and even sixteen feet below the level of high water. Every where there are proofs of the coast having sunk, and the subsidence seems to have gone on in very modern times ; for some old cedars still i % ) Chap. IX. FOSSIL MASTODON. 175 standing on the surface have been killed by the en- croachment of the salt water. We had come from Charleston in a small private steam-boat, and after passing Strawberry Ferry and entering the Santee ca- nal, were allowed by favour to pass through the locks without paying tolls, and, contrary to the usual regula- tions, which exclude steam-boats. The thoughtless negroes allowed the chimney of our vessel to get so choked up with soot that we were soon forced to quit this conveyance, and travel by land. The barges on the canal are constructed of different sizes, so that, after going down laden with cotton, they are put one into another when returning empty, and thus escape a large part of the tolls at the locks. The slaves are fond of cock-fighting ; and on the prow of each barge there stood usually a game-cock, perched as if he were the ensign of the vessel. We passed the Brygon Swamp, about forty miles north of Charleston, where the remains of the mas- todon were found when the canal was cut. Wild animals might still be mired in this same morass, latitude 33° 20' N., showing that these fossils in the southern States occur in precisely the same geological position as in New York and Canada. We slept at Wantoot, and then went by Eutaw to Vance's Ferry on the Santee river, then to Cave Hall, exa- mining the tertiary white marl and limestone, and I 4 i ii ' 176 LIME-SINKS. Chap. IX. collecting the shells and corals contained in it. Lime- sinks, or funnel-shaped cavities, are frequent in this country, arising from natural tunnels and cavities in the subjacent limestone, through some of which sub- terranean rivers flow. An account was given me of a new hollow which opened about fifteen years ago, about two miles south of the Santee river, into which a mule drawing a plough sank suddenly. About a hundred yards from the same spot, I saw a large cavern sixty feet high at its entrance in the white limestone, from the mouth of which flowed a small stream. The undermining eftect of such rivers ex- plains the linear arrangement so common in lime- sinks in South Carolina and Georgia. The walls of such " sinks " are vertical, and the strata ex2)0sed to view consist usually of clay and sand, which rest upon the limestone. From Cave Hall we went in a north-westerly di- rection to Stoudenmire Creek, a tributary of the Santee, where the siliceous burr-stone and brick-red loam appear above the white limestone. In the course of this examination, I satisfied myself that the limestone and white marl, a formation which must sometimes amount to 120 feet in thickness, in the low region of Cooper river and the Santee canal, arc a continuation of the same Eocene deposit which I had seen at Shell BluflP, at Jacksonboro', and other Chap. IX. EOCENE FOSSILS. 177 places on the Savannah river, and which I after- wards observed at Wihnington, in North Carolina. I found many species in all these places, common to those of Claiborne, in Alabama, where the largest number (more than 200) of Eocene shells in a good state of preservation have been met with ; and are described and figured in the works of Mr. Conrad and Mr. Lea of Philadelphia. Dr. Kavenel pointed out to me some remarkable new sj^ecies of Scutella at the Grove, near the mouth of the Cooper river, and these were accompanied by several well-known Eocene shells like those of Claiborne. The same white limestone and marl may be said to be continuous for forty miles, from the Grove to the Santee river. At Eutaw and other points, corals of the genera Idmonea, Aci/stis, Pustulopora, Vlnculai^ia, and Es- chara occur, with a species of Scalaria, and other shells. These fossils, and the rock containing them, reminded me so much of the straw-coloured lime- stone of the cretaceous formation seen on the banks of Timber Creek, in New Jersey, that I do not wonder that some errors had arisen from confound- ing the tertiary and secondary deposits of the south. The species, however, prove on closer inspection to be different. This lithological resemblance of the rocks seems to have led to the admission into Dr. Morton's list of the cretaceous fossils of North I 5 178 EOCENE SHELLS. Chap. IX. America ; a list for the most part very correct, of the following seven tertiary species which really came from the Eocene strata of South Carolina. These are, Balanus peregrinus, Pecten calvatusy P, membranosus, Terebratula lachryma, Conus gyratus, Scutella Lyelli, and Echinus infulatus (see Morton's Synopsis, pi. 10.). The belief that all these species were common to the chalk and tertiary strata led naturally to the opinion that in the southern States a formation existed inter- mediate in character between the rocks of the se- condary and those of the tertiary periods. I consider the burr-stone and associated clays and sands of Stoudenmire and Aikin, South Carolina, and of Augusta, Millhaven, and Stony Bluff, in Georgia, to belong also to an Eocene deposit, and to be higher in the series than the white limestone formation. Out of 125 species of Eocene shells which I col- lected in the southern States, or which were presented to me, I have only been able to identify seven with European species of the same epoch. These are Trochus agglutinans. Solarium canaliculatum, Bo" nellia terebellata, Infundibulum trochiformey Litlio- domus dactyluSf Cardita planicosta, and Ostrea bcU lovacina. But there are a considerable number of representa- tive species, and an equal number of forms peculiar to these older tertiary strata of America. i Chap. IX. MALARIA IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 179 The Ostrea sellceformisj which may be considered as representing the O. Jlabellula of the Paris and London basins, appears to be one of the most cha- racteristic and widely disseminated Eocene shells in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, for I found it at Shell Bluff and on the Santee river, and the James river, in Virginia. On the banks of the Cooper river, we heard occa- sionally the melodious and liquid note of the mocking- bird in the woods. It is of a fearless disposition, and approaches very near to the houses. I can well imagine that in summer, when the leaves are out, and the flowers in full splendour, this region must be most beautiful. But it is then that the planters are compelled by the fever and ague to abandon their country seats. It was not sa formerly. When the English army was camjjaigning on the Cooper and Santee rivers in the revolutionary war, they en- camped with impunity in places where it would now be death to remain for a few days in the hot season. I inquired what could have caused so great a change, and found the phenomenon as much a matter of controversy as the origin of the malaria in Italy. The clearing away of the wood from large spaces is the chief alteration in the physical con- dition of this region in the course of the last sixty years, whereby tlie damp and swampy grounds un- I 6 , 180 MALARIA IN SOUTH CAROLINA. Chap. I X dergo annually the process of being dried up by a burning sun. Marshes which are overflowed by the tide twice in every twenty-four hours near the neigh- bouring coast, both in South Carolina and Georgia, are perfectly healthy. Dr. Arnold remarks, in his lioman History, that lionie was more healthy before the drainage of the Canipagna, and when there was more natural wood in Italy and in northern Europe generally. In the southern States of the Union there are no fevers in winter, at a season when there is no large extent of damp and boggy soil exposed to a hot sun, and undergoing desiccation. On our way home from Charleston, by the rail- way from Orangeburg, I observed a thin black line of charred vegetable matter exposed in the perpendi- cular section of the bank. The sand cast out in dig- ging the railway had been thrown up on the original soil, on wliich the pine forest grew ; and farther ex- cavations had laid open the junction of the rubbish and the soil. As geologists, we may learn from this fact how a thin seam of vegetable matter, an inch or two thick, is often the only monument to be looked for of an ancient surface of dry land, on which a luxuriant forest may have grown for thousands of years. Even this seam of friable matter may be washed away when the region is submerged, and, if not, rain-water percolating freely through the Chap. IX. CHEERFULNESS OF THE NEGROES. 181 sand may, in the course of ages, gradually carry away the carbon. As there were no inns in that part of South Ca- rolina through which we passed in this short tour, and as we were every where received liospitably by the planters, I had many opportunities of seeing their mode of life, and the condition of the domestic and farm slaves. In some rich houses maize, or Indian corn, and rice were entirely substituted for wheaten bread. The usual style of living is that of English country gentlemen. They have well-appointed car- riages and horses, and Avell-trained black servants. The conversation of the gentlemen turned chiefly on agricultural subjects, shooting, and horse-racing. Se- veral of the mansions were surrounded with deer- parks. Arriving often at a late hour at our quarters in the evening, we heard the negroes singing loudly and joyously in chorus after their day's work was over. On one estate, about forty black children were brought up daily before the windows of the planter's liouse, and fed in sight of the family, otherwise, we were told, the old women who have charge of them might, in the absence of the parents, appropriate part of their allowance to themselves. All the slaves have some animal food daily. When they are ill, they sometimes refuse to take medicine, except from the 182 BOASTFULNESS OF THE NEGROES. Chap. IX. hands of the master or mistress; and it is of all tasks the most delicate for the owners to decide when they are really sick, and when only shamming from indolence. After the accounts I had read of the sufferings of slaves, I was agreeably surprised to find them, in general, so remarkably cheerful and light-hearted. It is true that I saw no gangs working under over- seers on sugar-plantations, but out of two millions and a half of slaves in the United States, the larger proportion are engaged in such farming occupations and domestic services as I witnessed in Georgia and South Carolina. I was often for days together with negroes who served me as guides, and found them as talkative and chatty as children, usually boasting of their master's wealth, and their own peculiar me- rits. At an inn in Virginia, a female slave asked us to guess for how many dollars a year she was let out by her owner. We named a small sum, but she told us exultingly, that we were much under the mark, for the landlord paid fifty dollars, or ten guineas a year for her hire. A good-humoured butler, at another inn in the same state, took care to tell me that his owner got 30/. a year for him. The coloured stewardess of a steam-ship was at great pains to tell us her value, and how she came by the name of Queen Victoria. When we recollect that the dollars are not their own. CUAP. IX. NEGRO VANITY. 183 we can hardly refrain from smiling at the childlike simplicity with which they express their satisfaction at the high price set on them. That price, however, is a fair test of their intelligence and moral worth, of which they have just reason to feel proud, and their pride is at least free from all sordid and mercenary considerations. We might even say that they labour with higher motives than the whites — a disinterested love of doing their duty. I am aware that wfi may reflect and philosophise on this pe- culiar and amusing form of vanity, until we per- ceive in it the evidence of extreme social degra- dation ; but the first impression which it made upon my mind was very consolatory, as I found it im- possible to feel a painful degree of commiseration for persons so exceedingly well satisfied with themselves. South Carolina is one of the few states where there is a numerical preponderance of slaves. One night, at Charleston, I went to see the guard-house, where there is a strong guard kept constantly in arms, and on the alert. Every citizen is obliged to serve in person, or find a substitute ; and the maintenance of such a force, the strict laws against importing books relating to emancipation, and the prohibition to bring back slaves who have been taken by their masters into free states, show that the fears of the owner, whether well-founded or not, are real. ft 184 NEGRO WEDDING. Chap. IX. During our stay at Charleston, wc were present at a negro wedding, where the bride and bridegroom, and nearly all the company, were of unmixed African race. They were very merry. The bride and bride- maids all dressed in white. The marriage service performed by an episcopal clergyman. Not long afterwards, when staying at a farm-house in North Carolina, I happened to ask a planter if one of his nejrroes with whom we had been conversing; was married. He told me. Yes, he had a wife on that estate, as well as another, her sister, on a different property which belonged to him ; but that there was no legal validity in the marriage ceremony. I re- marked, that he must be mistaken, as an episcopal minister at Charleston would not have lent himself to the performance of a sacred rite, if it were nu- gatory in practice, and in the eye of the law. He replied, that he himself was a lawyer by profession, and that no legal validity ever had been, or ought to be, given to the marriage tic, so long as the right of sale could separate parent and child, husband and wife. Such separations, he said, could not always be prevented, when slaves multiplied fast, though they were avoided by the masters as far as possible. He defended the custom of bringing up the children of the same estate in common, as it was far more humane not to cherish domestic ties amons; slaves. Chap. IX. INXREASE OF SLAVES. 185 On the same farm I talked with several slaves who had been set to fell timber by task-work, and had finished by the middle of the day. They never ap- peared to be overworked; and the rapidity witli Avhich they increase beyond the whites in the United States shows that they are not in a state of dis- comfort, oppression, and misery. Doubtless, in the same manner as in Ireland and parts of Great Britain, the want of education, mental culture, and respect for themselves, favours improvident mar- riages among the poor ; so the state of mere animal existence of the slave, and his low moral and in- tellectual condition, coupled with kind treatment and all freedom from care, promote their multipli- cation. The effect of the institution on the progress of the whites is most injurious, and, after travelling in the northern States, and admiring their rapid ad- vance, it is most depressing to the spirits. There appears to be no place in society for poor whites. If they are rich, their slaves multiply, and from mo- tives of kindly feeling towards retainers, and often from false pride, they are very unwilling to sell them. Hence they are constantly tempted to maintain a larger establishment than is warranted by the amount of their capital, and they often become involved in their circumstances, and finally bankrupt. The pru- dence, temper, and decision of character required to manage a plantation successfully is very great. It is 180 LAWS AGAINST EDUCATION. Chap. IX. I I I I' notorious that tlic hardest taskmasters to the shives are those who come from the northern free States. I often asked myself, when in the midst of a large plantation, what steps I would take if I had inherited such a property from British ancestors. I thought, first, of immediately emancii)ating all the slaves, but I was reminded that the law humanely i^rovides, in that case, that I should still supi)ort them, so that I might ruin myself and family, and it would still be a question whether those whom I had released from bondage would be happier, or would be pre- pared for freedom. I then proposed to begin with education as a preliminary step. Here I was met with the objection that, since the abolition movement and the fanatical exertions of missionaries, severe statutes had been enacted, making it penal to teach slaves to read and write. I must first, therefore, endeavour to persuade my fellow slave-holders to repeal these laws against improving the moral and intellectual condition of the slaves. I remarked that, in order to overcome the apathy and reluctance of the planters the same kind of agitation, the same " pressure from without," might be indispensable, which had brought about our West Indian eman- cipation. To this my American friends replied, that the small number of our slaves, so insignificant in comparison to their two and a half millions, had CuAP. IX. CONVEUSATION WITH PLANTERS. 187 made an indeiimity to the owner possible ; also that the frre negroe-, in small islands, could always be laid in subjection by the British fleets; and, lastly, that En;jfland had u ri|j;ht to interfere and legislate for her own colonies, whereas the northern States of the Union, and foreigners, had no constitutional right to intermeddle with the domestic concerns of the slave States. Such intervention, by exciting the fears and indignation of the planters, had retarded, and nmst always be expected to retard, the i)rogress of the cause. They also reminded me how long and ob- stinate a struggle the Vtest Indian proprietors hud made against the emancipationists in the British House of Connnons; and they hinted, that if the different islands had been directly represented in the Lower House, and there had been Dukes of Jamaica, Marquises of Antigua, and Earls of Bar- badoes in the Upper House, as the slave states are represented in Congress, the measure would never have been carried to this day. The more I reflected on the condition of the slaves, and endeavoured to think on a practicable plan for hastening the period of their liberation, the more difficult the subject appeared to me, and the more I felt astonished at the confidence displayed by so many anti-slavery speakers and writers on both sides of the Atlantic. The course pursued by these I 188 ABOLITION MOVEMENT. Chap. IX. agitators sliows that, next to the positively wicked, the class who arc usually called " well-meaning persons " are the most mischievous in society. Be- fore the year 1830, a considerable number of the planters were in the habit of regarding slavery as a great moral and political evil, and many of them openly proclaimed it to be so in the Virginia debates of 1831-2. The emancipation party was gradually gaining ground, and not unreasonable hopes were entertained that the States of Kentucky, Virginia, and jVIaryland would soon fix on some future day for the manumission of their slaves. This step had already been taken in most of the States north of the Potomac, and slavery was steadily retreating southwards. From the moment that the abolition movement began, and that missionaries were sent to the southern States, a re-action was perceived — the jilanters took the alarm — laws were passed against education — the condition of the slave was worse; and not a few of the planters, by dint of defending their institutions against the arguments and mis- representations of their assailants, came actually to delude themselves into a belief that slavery was legitimate, wise, and expedient — a positive good in itself. There were many, indeed, who thought dif- ferently, but who no longer dared to express their opinions freely on the subject. Chap. IX. CONDITION OF THE SLAVES. 189 It is natural that those planters who are of be- nevolent dispositions, and indulgent to their slaves, and who envy the northern proprietor, who, now that the Indians have passed away, has the good fortune not to share his country with another race, should be greatly irritated when the cruelty of the slave-holders, as a class, is held up to the reprobation of mankind. A deep sense of injustice, and a feeling of indignation, disinclines them to persevere in ad- vocating the cause of emancipation. I was so much occupied and absorbed in my scientific pursuits that I never felt tempted to touch on this exciting subject, and therefore, perhaps, the planters spoke out their sentiments to me more freely. " Labour," they said, " is as compulsory in Europe as here ; but in Europe they who refuse to work have the alter- native of starvation ; here the slave who is idle has the alternative of corporal punishment ; for, whether he works or not, he must always be fed and clothed." They complained to me much of the manner in which the escape of runaway slaves was favoured in the free States. Their innocence, they said, is always assumed, and the cruelty and harshness of their owners, taken for granted ; whereas the fugitives often consist of good-for-nothing characters, who would have been put into gaol in Europe, but who here are left at large, because their masters are un- ^ I ri, 190 CONDITION OF THE SLAVES. Chap. IX. willing to lose their services by imprisonment, while they are compelled to support them. If the same delinquents, they say, were flying from the con- stable in a free State, the public would sympathise with the police and the magistrate, and if they bore on their backs the marks of former chastisement in gaol, the general desire to apprehend them would be still more eager. These apologies, and their as- surance that they found it to their interest to treat their slaves kindly, had no effect in inducing me to believe that, Avhere such great power is intrusted to the owner, that power will not be frequently abused ; but it has made me desire to see a fair statement of the comparative statistics of crimes and punishments in slave States and free countries. If we could fairly estimate the misery of all offenders in the prisons, penitentiaries, and penal settlements of some large European province, and then deduct the same from the sufferings of the slaves in a large southern State of the Union, the excess alone ought, in fair- ness, to be laid to the charge of the slave-owners. While pointing out the evil unreservedly, we should do the owner the justice to remember that the system of things which we deprecate has been in- herited by him from his British ancestors, and that it is rarely possible or safe to bring about a great social reform in a few years. i Chap. IX. EFFECTS OF SUDDEN EMANCIPATION. 191 Had the measure of emancipating all the slaves been carried through as rapidly as some abolitionists have desired, the fate of the negroes might have been almost as deplorable as that of the aboriginal Indians. We must never forget that the slaves have at present a monopoly of the labour-market ; the planters being bound to feed and clothe them, and being unable to turn them off and take white la- bourers in their place. The coloured population, therefore, are protected against the free competition of the white emigrants, with whom, if they were once liberated, they could no longer successfully contend. I am by no means disjiosed to assume that the natural capacities of the negroes, who always appeared to me to be an amiable, gentle, and inof- fensive race, may not be equal in a moral and in- tellectual point of view to those of the Europeans, provided the coloured population were placed in cir- cumstances equally favourable for their development. But it would be visionary to expect that, under any imaginable system, this race could at once acquire as much energy, and become as rapidly progressive, as the Anglo-Saxons. To inspire them with such an aptitude for rapid advancement must be the work of time — the result of improvement carried on through several successive generations. Time is precisely the condition for which the advocates of the immediate * 192 DYING OUT OF SLAVERY. Chap. IX. ■J liberation of the blacks would never sufficiently al- low. The great experiment now making in the West Indies affords no parallel case, because the climate there is far more sultry, relaxing, and trying to Europeans, than in the southern States of the Union ; and it is w^ell known that the West Indian proprietors have no choice, the whites being so few in number, that the services of the coloured race are indispensable. Professor Tucker, of Virginia, has endeavoured to show, that the density of population in the slave States will amount, in about sixty years, to fifty per- sons in a square mile. Long before that period ar- rives, the most productive lands will have been all cultivated, and some of the inferior soils resorted to : the price of labour will fall gradually as compared to the means of subsistence, and it will, at length, be for the interest of the masters to liberate their slaves, and to employ the more economical and productive labour of freemen. The same causes will then come into operation which formerly emancipated the villeins of western Europe, and will one day set free the serfs of Russia. It is to be hoped, however, that the planters will not wait for more than half a century for such an euthanasia of the institution of slavery ; for the increase of the coloured population in sixty years would be a formidable evil, snce in this Chap. IX. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 193 instance they are not, like villeins and serfs, of the same race as their masters. They cannot be fused at once into the general mass, and become amalgamated with the whites, for their colour still remains as the badge of their former bondage, so that they continue, after their fetters are removed, to form a separate and inferior caste. How long this state of things would last must depend on their natural capabilities, moral, intellectual, and physical ; but if in these they be equal to the whites, they would eventually be- come the dominant race, since the climate of the south, more congenial to their constitutions, would give them a decided advantage. A philanthropist may well be perplexed when he desires to devise some plan of interference which may really promote the true interests of the negro. But the way in which the planters would best consult their own interests appears to me very clear. They should exhibit more patience and courage towards the abolitionists, whose influence and numbers they greatly over-rate, and lose no time in educating the slaves, and encouraging private manumission to prepare the way for general emancipation. All seem agreed that the states most ripe for this great reform are ]Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and INIissouri. Experience K I 11 ) • SSP" 1 ( s^ < .■*! U h I 194 ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. Chap. IX. has proved In the northern States that emancipation immediately checks the increase of the coloured population, and causes the relative number of the whites to augment very rapidly. Every year, in proportion as the north-western States fill up, and as the boundary of the new settlers in the west is removed farther and farther, beyond the Mississippi and Missouri, the cheaper and more accessible lands south of the Potomac will offer a more tempting field for colonisation to the swarms of New Eng- landers, who are averse to migrating into slave states. Before this influx of white labourers, the coloured race will give way, and it will require the watchful care of the philanthropist, whether in the north or south, to prevent them from being thrown out of employment, and reduced to destitution. If due exertions be made to cultivate the minds, and protect the rights and privileges of the negroes, and it nevertheless be found that they cannot con- tend, when free, with white competitors, but are superseded by them, still the cause of humanity will have gained. The coloured people, though their numbers remain stationary, or even diminish, may in the mean time be happier than now, and attain to a higher moral rank. They would, moreover, escape the cruelty and injustice which are the invariable Chap. IX. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 105 i 'S consequences of the exercise of irresponsible power, especially where authority must be sometimes dele- gated by the planter to agents of inferior education and coarser feelings. And last, not least, emanci- jiation would effectually put a stop to the breeding, selling, and exporting of slaves to the sugar-growing States of the South, where, unless the accounts we usually read of slavery be exaggerated and distorted, the life of the negro is shortened by severe toil and suffering. Had the white man never interposed to trans- plant the negro into the New World, the most generous asserters of tlie liberties of the coloured race would have conceded that Africa afforded space enough for their development. Neither in their new country, nor in that of their origin, whether in a condition of slavery or freedom, have they as yet exhibited such superior qualities and virtues as to make us anxious that additional millions of them should multiply in the southern States of the Uaion; still less, that they should overflow into Texas and Mexico. .; %\ ' I! K 2 * m tg i m "i^ > r ill ■ «»■ ■ ^j piw c: ',? * fc.ta w .y^t,>- 196 WILMINGTON. Chap. X. CHAPTER X. Wihnhigton^N. C. — Mount Vernon. — Return to Philadelphia. — Reception of Mr, Dickens. — Museum and fossil human hones. Penitentiary. — Churches. — Religious excitement. — Coloured people of fortune. — Obstacles to their obtaining political and social equality. — No natural antipathy between the races. — Negro reservations. ^ Jan. 22. — I NOW turned my course northwards, and, after a short voyage in a steamer from Charles- ton, landed at Wilmington, in North Carolina. Here I collected fossils from tertiary formations of two ages, the Miocene marls, and an underlying Eocene limestone, harder than that of Shell Bluff and the Santee canal before mentioned; but con- taining many of the same shells, corals, and teeth of fishes. I then went by railway to South Washing- ton, visiting several farms on the banks of the north- east branch of Cape Fear river. Here I found cretaceous green marls, similar to those which I had seen 350 miles to the N. E. in New Jersey, with belcmnites and other characteristic organic remains, some of species not previously known. On several of the small plantations here I found the proprietors by no means in a thriving state. Chap. X. MOUNT VERNOxV. 197 evidently losing ground from year to year, and some of tlicm talking of abandoning the exhausted soil, and migrating with their slaves to the south-western States. If, while large numbers of the negroes were thus carried to the South, slavery had been abolished in North Carolina, the black population might ere this have been reduced considerably in numbers, without suffering those privations to which a free comjietition with white labourers must expose them, wherever great facilities for emigration are not afforded. A railway train shooting rapidly in the dark through the pine forests of North Carolina has a most singular appearance, resembling a large rocket fired horizontally, with a brilliant stream of revolving sparks extending behind the engine for several hundred yards, each spark being a minute particle of wood, which, after issuing from the chimney of the furnace, remains ignited for several seconds in the air. Now and then these fiery particles, which are in- visible by day, instead of lagging in the rear, find entrance by favour of the wind through the open windows of the car, and, while some burn holes in the traveller's cloak, others make their way into his eyes, causing them to smart most painfully. From the deck of our steam-boat on the Potomac we saw Mount Vernon, formerly the plantation of K 3 i\ !'' ■ ■• _ - •• fyUim _l]^-. l l^.., ■ il 198 M. NICOLLET. Chap. X. ^ i General AVaslilngton. Instead of exhibiting, like the farms in the northern States, a lively picture of progress and improvement, this property was de- scribed to me by all as worn out, and of less value now than in the days of its illustrious owner. The bears and wolves, they say, are actually re-entering their ancient haunts, which would scarcely have happened if slavery had been abolished in Virginia, At Petersburg, Mr. Kuffin, the agriculturist, and Mr. Tuomey, accompanied me in an excursion to col- lect tertiary fossils in the neighbourhood, and I examined with much instruction the organic remains in their cabinets. At Washington I saw M. Nicollet, and had a long conversation with this eminent astro- nomer and naturalist, who died the year after. He had just returned froui a geographical and geological survey of the Far West, and higher parts of the valley of the Mississippi and Missouri. He showed me the ammonites, baculites, and other chalk fossils brought by him from those distant regions, which establish the wide range of that peculiar assemblage of organic remains characteristic of the cretaceous era. The air was balmy on the Potomac the last day of January, and the winter had been so mild in the southern States, that we were surprised, on recrossing the Susquehanna at Havre de Grace in Maryland, to Chap. X. nilLADELl'IIIA. 109 sec large masses of floating ice brought do i from the Appalachian hills, and to feci the air -tnsibl} cooled while we were ferried over the broad river. It struck me as a curious coincidence, and one not entirely accidental, that, precisely in this part of our journey, I once more saw the low grounds covered with huge boulders, reminding me how vast a ter- ritory in the South I had passed over without encoun- tering a single erratic block. These far transported fragments of rock are decidedly a northern pheno- menon, or belong to the colder latitudes of the globe, being rare and exceptional in warmer regions. Philadelphia, Feb. 1. — The newspapers are filled with accounts of the enthusiastic reception which Mr. Charles Dickens is meeting with every where. Such homage has never been paid to any foreigner since Lafayette visited the States. The honours may appear extravagant, but it is in the nature of popular enthusiasm to run into excess. I find that several of my American friends are less disposed than I am to sympathise with the movement, regarding it as more akin to lion-hunting than hero-worship. They ex- press a doubt whether "Walter Scott, had he visited the U. S., would have been so much idolised. Perhaps not ; for Scott's poems and romances were less extensively circulated amongst the millions than the tales of Dickens. There may be no precedent in K 4 il — ^ ^ r r ^mm-^1 200 RECEPTION OF MR. DICKENS. CuAP. X. I V. I \ i Great Britain for a whole people thus unreservedly indulging their feelings of admiration for a favourite author ; but if so, the Americans deserve the more credit for obeying their warm impulses. Of course, many who attend the foreigner's crowded levee are merely gratifying a vulgar curiosity by staring at an object of notoriety ; but none but a very intelligent population could be thus carried away to flatter and applaud a man who has neither rank, wealth, nor power, who is not a militaiy hero or a celebrated political character, but simply a writer of genius, whose pictures of men and manners, and whose works of fiction, have been here, as in his own coun- try, an inexhaustible source of interest and amuse- ment. When at Philadelphia I was present at several meetings of the American Philosophical Society, and of the Academy of Natural Sciences. In the mu- seum of the former body I was shown a limestone from Santas, in Brazil, procured by Captain Elliott, of the U. S. navy, which contains a human skull, teeth, and other bones, together with fragments of shells, some of them retaining a portion of their colour. The rock is less solid than that of Guada- loupe, which it resembles. We are informed, that the remains of several hundred other human skeletons, imbedded in a like calcareous tufa, were dug out at Chap. X. SKELETON OF FOSSIL MASTODON. 201 the same place, about the year 1827.* The soil coverhig the solid stone supported a growth of large trees, which covered the face of a hill on the side of the river Santas. The height above the sea is not mentioned, and it is to be regretted that the notes obtained by Dr. Meigs from Captain Elliott were not fuller. I observed serpula) in the rock, a shell which the natives would not have carried inland for food. On the wdiole, therefore, I should infer, though we need further evidence, that this stone has emerged from the sea, and that there had been previously a submergence of dry land, perhaps the site of an Indian burial-ground. Dr. Harlan, the zealous and accomplished osteo- logist, who, to my great regret, died the year after (1843), at New Orleans, took me to see the entire skeleton of the large fossil mastodon, or so-called Missourium, brought by Mr. Koch from the state of Missouri. He pointed out several errors in the manner in which the tusks and bones were put to- gether. This splendid fossil has since been pur- chased by the British Museum, taken to pieces in London, and correctly set up again under the di- rection of Mr. Owen. It is the largest individual of the species (^Mastodon giganteus) yet discovered ; for * American Philosophical Transactions, 1828, p. 285. K 5 ,i.".n. -'i. .l ! .i.-J-A._! J,- ^ .^iM i ■ i ^ 202 FRESH-WATER SHELLS OF AMERICA. Chap. X, Dr. Harlan and I compared the femur with that of the largest mastodon previously known, from the state of New York, and preserved in Peale's Museum in this city. The dimensions of the Philadelphia ske- leton are less gigantic. I spent six weeks very agreeably in this city, much of my time being occupied in delivering a short course of lectures on geology, and in comparing, with the friendly aid of several naturalists, especially Mr. Conrad, the fossils collected by me in the South with those previously known, most of which are pre- served in the public and private cabinets here. Mr. Lea's collection of shells, which we visited more than once, rich in the fluviatile species of North America, was most interesting to me. There seems no end to the freshwater mussels of the genus Unio, as well as other fluviatile forms, such as Me- lania, which have been created to people the waters of a continent unrivalled in the number of its rivers, all so copiously filled with water during every sea- son of the year. Such an obvious relation of the zoological to the geographical peculiarities of a great region is striking, and reminds the geologist of the different states of the animal creation, which have accompanied the successive changes of the earth's surface in former ages. The same species of Cnio, and of other fresh-water shells, preserved in a fossil ■^1 Chap. X. rHILADELPIIIA PENITENTIARY. 203 state in alluvial strata, forming terraces one above the other to a considerable height above the Mis- sissippi and its tributaries, show that the fauna here alluded to, so modern in the earth's history, is never- theless of high antiquity, and has outlasted some important modifications in the shape of the valleys and levels of the North American streams. We were taken to see the Penitentiary at Philadelphia, where all the prisoners arc confined in separate cells. They see the keepers, chaplain, and occasional visiters, by which the rigour of their solitude is mitigated. They are taught to read, and have numerous occupations. If we recollect that this establishment is not an asylum for the poor, aged, and destitute, like our workhouses, but a place for the punishment and reform of criminals, we may regard it as a humane institution, and it appeared to me admirably managed. A few years ago, an American professor being asked at the end of a short stay in London whether he had been pleased with his reception, said he had been often invited out to dinner, but no one during his whole stay had offered him a seat in their pew in church. At Philadelphia, besides other kinds of Iiospitality, we had certainly no reason to complain of any want of attention in this respect, for we had pressing invitations to private pews in no less than K 6 -! fr p (.."- ,"11 J .\m 204 CHURCHES. ClIAP. X. i i six different episcopal churches soon after our arrival, of which we availed ourselves on as many successive Sundays, and were struck with the handsome style of the buildings, and the comfortable fitting up of the pews. In regard to the preaching in these and in most of the Episcopalian, Presby- terian, Baptist, and Unitarian churches which I entered in the United States, I thought it good, and there seemed to me to be two great advantages at least in the voluntary principle: first, that the ministers are in no danger of going to sleep; and, secondly, that they concern themselves much less with politics than is the case with us. To be without a body of dissenters, dissatisfied with their exclusion from ecclesiastical endowments, is a national blessing, which not only every statesman, but every church- man, will admit. I am by no means prepared to say whether there may not be a balance of evil in the voluntary system sufficient to outweigh the gain alluded to. While here, I heard complaints of the religious excitement into which the city had been just thrown by the arrival of a popular New England preacher, who attracted such crowds that at length all the sittings of his church were mo- nopolized by the fair sex. American gallantry forbids that a woman should remain standing while gentlemen are comfortably seated in their pews, so 1 Chap. X. EELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 2^5 that at last the men were totally excluded. Notice was immediately given that certain services were to be entirely reserved for the men, an announcement well calculated to provoke curiosity, and to tempt many a stray sheep from other folds. It was then thought expedient for the ministers of rival sects to redouble their zeal, that they might not be left behind in the race, and even the sober Episcopalians, though highly disapproving of the movement, increased the number of their services; so that I was assured it would be possible for the same individual between the hours of seven o'clock in the morning and nine in the evening, to go seven times to church in one day. The consequences are too like those occasionally experienced in the " old country," where enthusiasm is not kindled by so much ^;ee competition, to be worth dwelling upon. Every day added new recruits to a host of ascetic devotees, and places of public amusement were nearly deserted ; at last even the innocent indulgence of social intercourse was not deemed blameless ; and the men who had generally escaped the contagion in the midst of their professional avocations, found a gloom cast over society or over their domestic circle. The young ladies, in particular, having abundance of leisure, were filled with a lively sense of their own 1 1. 1 206 EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. CUAP. X. li exceeding wickedness, and the sins of their parents and guardians. Many of the most respectable Quaker families have recently joined the Episcopal church, which is very flourishing here, not only in this city, but in the United States generally, having quadrupled its numbers in a period during which the population of the Union has only doubled. It is tru^i that immediately after the revolutionary war, when this form of worship was identified with royalist opinions, and when not a few of its professors left the country for Canada, Nova Scotia, or the mother country, the Episcopal establishment was depressed below its natural level. Its revival and rapid progress are nevertheless remarkable in this republican country, and are perhaps partly owing to the possession of large endowments, especially in the State of New York, rendering it less dependent on voluntary contributions, and partly to the better station of the foreign immigrants from Great Britain belonging to the Anglican church. r am assured, that if the salaries paid to the whole clergy of all sects in the Union are compared to those of the ministers of any other church in the world they will be found to be in excess in pro- portion to the population. Whether this be true or not, there is certainly no lack of divinity schools. Chap. X. RICH MAN OF COLOUR. 207 nor of ecclesiastical buildings, nor of crowded congre- gations, the men being as regular in their attendance as the women; and the rapidity with which new churches spring up in the wilderness is probably without example elsewhere. A rare event, the death of a wealthy man of colour, took place during my stay here, and his funeral was attended not only by a crowd of persons of his own race, but also by many highly respectable white mer- chants, by whom he was held in high esteem. He had made his fortune as a sail-maker, and is said to have been Avorth, at one time, sixty thousand pounds, but to have lost a great part of his riches by lending money with more generosity than prudence. I was rejoicing that his colour had proved no impediment to his rising in the world, and that he had been allowed so much fair play as to succeed in over-topping the majority of his white competitors, when I learnt, on further inquiry, that, after giving an excellent edu- cation to his children, he had been made unhappy, by finding they must continue, in spite of all their ad- vantages, to belong to an inferior caste. It appeared that, not long before his death, he had been especially mortified, because two of his sons had been refused a hearing at a public meeting, where they wished to speak on some subject connected with trade which concerned them. ' J - 'i \ ~-*~ -■ <#JI«I*N«(»***^" 208 FREE MEX OF COLOUR. Chap. X. In many states, the free blacks have votes, and exert their privilege at elections, yet there is not an instance of a single man of colour, although eligible by law, having been chosen a member of any state legislature. The schools for the coloured population at Boston are well managed, and the black children are said to show as much quickness in learning as the whites. To what extent their faculties might be developed as adults we have as yet no means of judging ; for if their first efforts are coldly received, or treated with worse than indifference, as in the case of the young Philadelphians before alluded to, it is im- possible that the higher kinds of excellence can be reached in literature, the learned professions, or in a political career. If any individual be gifted with finer genius than the rest, his mind will be the more sensitive to discouragement, especially when it pro- ceeds from a race whose real superiority over his co- loured fellow-citizens, in their present condition, he of all others would be the first to appreciate. It is after many trials attended with success, and followed by willing praise and applause, that self-confidence and intellectual power are slowly acquired ; and no well educated black has ever yet had an opportunity of ripening or displaying superior talents in this or any other civilised country. Canada and Ireland teach us how much time and how many generations are re- Chip. X. DErilESSIOX OF NEGKO RACE. 209 ! i quired for the blending together, on terms of perfect equality, both social and political, of two nations, the conquerors and the conquered, even where both are of the same race, and decidedly equal in their natural capacities, though differing in religion, manners, and language. But when, in the same community, we have two races so distinct in their physical peculiari- ties as to cause many naturalists, who have no desire to disparage the negro, to doubt whether both are of the same species, and started originally from the same stock ; when one of these, found in Africa in a savage and unprogressive state, has been degraded, by those who first colonized North America, to the lowest place in the social scale — to expect, under such a combination of depressing circumstances, that, in half a century, and in a country where more than six sevenths of the race are still held in bondage, the newly emancipated citizens should, under any form of government, attain at once a position of real equality, is a dream of the visionary philanthropist, whose impracticable schemes are more likely to injure than to forward a great cause. In the West Indies, where circumstances are far more favourable to a fair experiment, we have found how much easier it is to put an end to slavery than to elevate the blacks to an equal standing with the whites in society, and in the management of public f the Taconic range and of* the Connecticut Kiver, and forty-five miles due west of Boston. I found, interstratified with the mica schist and associated clay-slate of this place, a regular bed of plumba- ginous anthracite, or impure graphite, portions of which give a streak on paper like a lead pencil. It has been used for making pencils, while a part of the stratum has been worked for coal, but apparently without profit, as the mine is now abandoned. The mica schist contains garnets and asbestus, and is much impregnated with carbonaceous matter. I searched in vain for vegetable impressioiiS in the plumbaginous anthracite, which was in part iridescent, like coal, and so much resembled some of the earthy anthracites which I soon afterwards saw on the borders of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, at Wrcntham, Cumberland, Attleborough, and Mansfield, that I feel strongly inclined to believe that the Worcester beds, however crystalline they may be, are no other than carboniferous rocks in an altered or metamorphic state. At the various loca- lities last mentioned I found in the carbonaceous slates accompanying the anthracite the most common coal plants, such as Pecopteris plumosa, Neuropteris flexuosa, Sphenophyllum, Calamites, &c. Although the associated strata were not in a crystalline con- dition, they and the coal were occasionally traversed M 4 248 ANTHRACITE IN MICA SCHIST. Chap. XII. ! 'r ^ jn li .ii h ) i r i i; with veins of quartz, like the plumbaginous bed at Worcester ; and there are many places in Khode Island and Massachusetts, pointed out by Dr. C. T. Jackson and Professor Hitchcock, in which the carboniferous and old red sandstone rocks pass into mica schist, and other hypogene rocks, especially in the neighbourhood of masses of granite and syenite. In some cases the pebbles of the conglomerate remain distinct, while the shaly base has been turned into a well-characterised mica schist, of which I obtained specimens. I have already mentioned (p. 90.) that in crossing from the west of the Alleghany mountains to the eastern portion of the Appalachian coal-field the volatile ingredients (oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen) of the original coal bear continually a smaller and smaller proportion to the carbon. In the specimens which I myself obtained from Pomeroy, Ohio, where the coal is bituminous, and where the strata are un- disturbed, the quantity of gaseous matter has been found by my friend Dr. Percy to be in the propor- tion of 19 per cent., the rest being carbon and ash. 2dly. In the coal at Frostburg, in Maryland, in the midst of the Alleghany chain, where the strata have undergone but slight disturbance, the pro- portion of volatile matter was found to be 9^ per cent. 3dly. In the Pennsylvanian anthracite of the f ! H lAP. XII. Chap. XII. ANTHRACITE IN MICA SCHIST. 249 13 bed Rhode C. T. 3I1 the ss into ially in yenite. •merate turned hich I rossino- to the Id the trogen) er and cimens where ire un- 3 been ropor- d ash. In the strata pro- i per >f the i t Lehiffh and Mauch Chunk mines, before alluded to (p. 85.), the volatile ingredients are about 5 per cent.* In the plumbaginous anthracite of Worcester the proportion of volatile matter is about 3 per cent., there being a slight trace of nitrogen. I conceive that a more powerful action of those same plutonic causes (heat, and other subterranean agencies) which are capable of converting sedimentary into crystal- line rocks may have expelled nearly all the gaseous ingredients from a stratum of coal or anthracite, and turned it into an impure plumbago, while the car- boniferous grits and shales were changed into car- bonaceous mica-schist, clay-slate, and quartzite. At Little Falls, on the Mohawk River, and elsewhere in the U. S., and at the Falls of Montmorency, and other places in Canada, I have seen the lowest Silurian strata resting un conformably on gneiss and other hypogene formations. But we ought not to be surprised on that account, if we find on the Ame- * These results were obtained from an elaborate analysis made for me by the kindness of Dr. J. Percy of Birmingham, since the statement given at p. 90. was printed. They bear out the geo- logical inferences, there referred to, of Professor H.D. Rogers ; but it will be seen that the proportions of the chemical consti- tuents differ greatly, the gaseous matter being only half the previously estimated quantity. For details of the analysis and manipulations, see Appendix to a paper by the author, in the Journal of Geol. Soc, London, Ko XL 1845. M 5 ,i:v 250 LECTURES IN Chap. XII. V >:■■ I , ': li 11 rican continent, as in the Swiss Alps and other regions in Europe, strata containing plants of the coal-measures, or of still newer dates, which have acquired the hypogene or metamorphic structure. Xear the Atlantic border of the United States, in particular, we should be prepared for such a dis- covery, for we know that those powerful movements which have given rise to the Appalachian chain, folding and dislocating the solid rocks for a breadth of 150, and a length of more than 1000 miles, and the injection into the eastern portion of the chain, of igneous rocks of the trappean and plutonic order, are phenomena posterior in date to the deposition of the American carboniferous strata. During so long a series of subterranean changes as are implied by these disturbances it may well have hai^pened that con- siderable masses of the coal-bearing, as well as of more ancient paleozoic strata, should have assumed a crystalline texture. At a small New Eno-land town in the Taconic hills above mentioned I was getting some travelling instructions at the bar of an inn, when a carpenter entered who had just finished his day's work, and asked what lecture wo ild be given that evening. The reply was, Mr. N. on the Astronomy of the jNIiddle Ages. Pie then inquired if it was gratis, and was answered in the negative, the price being AP. XII. Chap. XII. NEW ENGLAND VILLAGES. 251 ;J twenty-live cents (or one shilling English) ; upon which he said he should go, and accordingly returned home to dress. It reflects no small credit on the national system of education in New En«j,land, that crowds of the labouring classes of both sexes should seek recreation, after the toils of the day are over, in listening to discourses of this kind. Among the most popular subjects of lectures which I saw an- nounced in newspapers or placards in different towns and villages were Temperance, a cause which has made great progress of late years among Protestants as well as Catholics, and which began in the U. S. fifteen years before the corresponding movement in Great Britain; Phrenology, to the pretensions of which the Americans lend too credulous an ear ; the History of the American Revolution; the Present State and Past History of China ; Travels in the Holy Land ; Meteorology, and a variety of other topics. April 15. — Visited Professor Hitchcock at Am- herst College, Massachusscts, by whom the ••geolo- gical survey of that State has been ably executed. He showed me several ridges and large rounded hillocks of transported materials, or " drift," north of Amherst, surrounding swamps, in precisely the same manner as those usually referred to the glacial j^criod in Scotland and Northern Europe. They have been called " moraines " by some geologists ; but if we call SI 6 I ■ l' fi! ill f. n r I 252 rOSSIL FOOTSTEPS OF BIRDS. Chap. XII. in the agency of ice, as I am well disposed to do, we must attribute their accumulation to the melting of icebergs charged with fragments of gravel and rock rather than to glaciers. Professor Hitchcock has, in fact, styled them iceberg moraines. At Smith's Ferry, near Northampton, about eleven miles north of Springfield, I examined, in company with the Professor, the red sandstone on the banks of the Connecticut E-iver, where the cele- brated foot-prints of birds are beautifully exhibited. The rock consists of thin-bedded sandstone (New Red, Trias ?), alternating with red-coloured shale, some of the flags being distinctly ripple -marked. The dip of the layers, on which the Ornithichnites are imprinted in great abundance, varies from eleven to fifteen degrees. It is evident that in this place many superimposed beds must have been successively trodden upon, as diflerent sets of footsteps are traceable throuo;h a thickness of sandstone exceedinc: ten feet. My companion also pointed out to me that some of the beds, exposed several yards down the river, and containing Ornithichnites, would, if pro- longed, pass under those of the principal locality, and make the entire thickness throughout which the im- pressions prevail at intervals, perhaps, twenty or thirty feet. We cannot, therefore, explain these phenomena simply by supposing large sheets of mud to have .! ! '. XII. Chap. XII. FOSSIL FOOTSTEPS OF BIRDS. 253 ), we i been spread out by the tidal waters, as may be observed on the broad flats bordering the Bay of Fundy. These last, it is true, as will be shown in a future chapter, exhibit the recent foot- prints of birds, in many successive layers, for a depth of two or three inches; but I cannot conceive such markings to extend through a thickness of twenty-five feet without supposing a subsidence of the ground to have taken place from time to time during the deposition of the layers on which the birds walked. The tracks are too well defined and distinct to have been made under water : there are clear indications of joints in the different toes ; and there is generally such a deviation from a straight line in any three prints following each other as is observable in the trifid marks which birds leave on the sands of the sea-coast. The birds must have been of various sizes, from that of a small sand-piper to bipeds larger than the ostrich ; a.cid it is highly interesting to remark how regularly the distance between the footsteps increases or diminishes in proportion to the size of the foot-marks. In some of the most di- minutive, for example, they are no more than three inches apart, but in the case of the largest {Oriii- thichnites gigas) they are from four to six feet. The length of the foot in the huge species last mentioned is in some instances no less than nineteen inches. Its ll 254 FOSSIL FOOTSTErS OF BIRDS. Chap. XII. I I f If! ; 1 1. 1 I; t f magnitude being nearly twofold that of the African ostrich, as estimated by the foot (ta- pede Ilercidem), and the acknowledged antiquity of the rock, dis- inclined many naturalists to adopt the views of Pro- fessor Hitchcock, when he referred the markings to extinct birds ; but the discovery of the bones of the Moa or Deinornis of New Zealand, described by Mr. Owen, proved the existence, at no remote period, of feathered bipeds nearly as gigantic, and reconciled the zoologist at least to the credibility of the fact, however marvellous. The waters of the Connecticut being low, I had an opportunity of seeing a ledge of rock of red shale laid bare, on which were imprinted a single line of nine footsteps of Ornithichnitcs (jiganteusy turning alternately right and left, and separated from each other by intervals of abo^^t five feet. At one spot there was a space several yards square, where the entire surface of the shale was irregular and jagged, owing to the number of footsteps, not one of which could be traced distinctly, as when a flock of sheep have passed over a muddy road ; but on withdrawing from this area the confusion gradually ceased, and the tracks became more and more distinct. The Professor informed me, that since he first announced his belief, in 1836, that these inij)ressions were refer- able to birds, he had observed above two thousand CilAP. XII. MOUNT nOLTOKE. 255 foot-prints, probably made by nearly thirty distinct species, all indented on the upper surface of the strata, and only exhibiting casts in relief on the under side of the beds resting on such indented sur- faces. This sandstone is of much higher antiquity (see p. 125.) than any formation in which fossil bones or other indications of birds have been detected in Europe. Still we have no ground for inferring from such fticts that the feathered tribe made its first ap- pearance in the western hemisphere at this period. It is too common a fallacy to fix the era of the lirst creation of each tribe of plants or animals, and even of animate beings in general, at the precise point where our present retrospective knowledge happens to stop. The discoveries in Connecticut ought to teach us extreme caution in deducing general conclusions from mere negative evidence, especially when we infer the non-existence of land animals from the absence of their remains in contemporaneous marine strata. On leaving Amherst for Springfield, we ascended Mount Holyoke, the lower part of Avhich is formed of horizontal strata of red sandstone, while the sum- mit is capped with a picturesque mass of basaltic greenstone. This hill has been isolated by denuda- tion, and from its summit we enjoyed a fine view of ^, > IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) ^ / A ^ 1.0 ^1^ Ui ■ IT Ui tii 12.2 I.I If. i^ 1 1.25 V' 16 V] <^ /: ^Vc/ y %^>> .^ <^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S»0 (716) 872-4503 4^0 H \i 256 GEOLOGY OF CUAP. XII. the fertile plain of the winding Connecticut. On its flanks we gathered the blue Hepatica triloba, the Houstonia cerulea, a white saxifrage, the May flower, Epigcea repens, and several plants, which have been recently naturalised in British gardens. Immediately after my arrival at Boston I set out (April 19th) to exjilore the island of Martha's Vine- yard, off" the south coast of IMassachusetts. Travellers who made this excursion a few years ago complain of being jolted in a coach over deep ruts and huge stones : now, an excellent railway carried me rapidly to New Bedford on the coast, where a steam-boat was in readiness, so that, having started long after sunrise, I was landed on " the Vineyard," eighty miles distant from Boston, in time to traverse half the island, Avhicli is about 20 miles long from east to west, before sunset. Late in the evening I reached the lofty cliffs of Gayhead, more than 200 feet high, at the western end of the island, where the highly- inclined tertiary strata are gaily coloured, some con- sisting of bright red clays, others of white, yellow, and green sand, and some of black lignite. They have been compared, not unaptly, by Professor Hitchcock, to the tertiary beds of Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight, which they resemble in appearance, though not in age. I collected many fossils here, assisted by some resident Indians, who are very intelligent. The sec- tion is continuous for four fifths of a mile, the beds ^y T XII. Chap. XII. ISLAND OF MAHTIIA's VINEYAKD. 257 illppiiig to the N. E. at an angle of from 35° to 50°, and in some places to 70°. Their entire thickness must be very great, exceeding 2000 feet. The clays predominate over the sands. In the black beds con- taining lignites coniferous wood is abundant, and amber is said to have been found. The organic re- mains prevail at intervals in various strata, but I ex- tracted most of them from a bed of green sand (A), Fig. 6. N.E. s. \v. Section at Cayhrad, A. Lighthouse. b. Greunsand with sharks' teeth. c. Osseous conglomerate with walrus. d. Drift. near the north-eastern end. They consisted of casts of shells, teeth of large sharks, the vertebra) of a dolphin, and of a whale of great size. I also disco- vered a tooth referred by Mr. Owen to the canine tooth of a seal. Together with these, I found numerous nodules of the shape of kidney potatoes, from one to two inches in diameter, smooth externally, which I pre- sume to have been coprolites. They have been analysed for me by my friend J. Middleton, Esq., F. G. S., and found to contain no less than 50 per cent, of phosphate of lime, the constitution of the latter being such as is peculiar to organic substances. They also consist of fluoride of calcium, chloride of 2/i8 FOSSIL WALRUS. Chap. XII. ■ I 1^ .li sodium, and other elements. Tliesc coprolites, there- fore, seem closely analogous in composition as in age, to those found by Professor Ilcnslow in the Suffolk crag of Felixstow, and which accompany the bones of sharks and cetacea. Near the lighthouse there is a- great fold in the beds, where they are so bent as to have twice a north-easterly and once a, south-westerly dip. One of these folded beds (c) consists of an osseous conglo- merate, in which I found several rolled cetaceous re- mains ; and I purchased from a fisherman residing near the promontory a fossil skull, which he tt)ld nic had fallen out of this conglomerate upon the beach below. It retained but a small portion of the original animal matter, was slightly rolled, and ]Mr. Owen re- cognised it as the cranium of a Walrus, or IMorse, nearly allied to the existing species (^Trichccus RosmaruSy Linn.). On comparison, it was oljservcd to differ from it, in having six molar teeth, instead of four, on each side of the upper jaw. There are eleven specimens of the recent species in the College of Surgeons, in all of which there are no more than four grinders on each side. The tusk, also, of the Gayhcad fossil has a rounder form than that of the recent Morse. (See plate V.) Near Chilmark, on the S. W. side of the island, I found the same beds as at Gayhead, in a still more disturbed state. Upon the whole, the organic remains. «* the •v 5'^ •i^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 'S ^i-^ Ji I I ■■^\ -^ ^ !X .'s ^ ^ ?s ■*■ s^ k •;- ' -<: --^^ ^ -, t *5 ja C V "*■ -i ■V ^ ^ Chap. XII. Martha's vineyard. 259 especially the sharks' teeth, lead me clccidetlly to the opinion that the strata belong to a part of the tertiary scries newer than the Eocene, to which they were formerly referred. They must be at least as modern as tlie Miocene marls of Virginia and Maryland, before described (p. 134). Several of the sharks' teeth are specifically identical with the fossils of those marls, and of the Faluns of Tourainc and the Suffolk crag ; and there are no grecnsands cither of the Eocene or cre- taceous periods in Martha's Vineyard, as some have conjectured. These conclusions, in regard to the mo- dern date of this formation, arc interesting, because, but for this small island, we should have had uo evi- dence of the development of a great scries of subter- ranean movements in this part of the American con- tinent. The disturbances in question occurred between the INIiocene epoch and the Boulder period ; and wc know not how far their influence may have extended over the hypogene rocks of New Engl ad. The tertiary clays and sands of Martha's Vineyird arc for the most part deeply buried beneath a mass of drift {d, Fig. 6.), in which lie huge erratic blocks of granite, often from twenty to thirty feet in diameter, which must have come from the North, probably from the mountains of New Hampshire. This covering of granitic detritus imparts to the soil a sterile character totally different from that which would naturally belong to the tertiary clays and marls. \^ i^. 2G0 INDTAN!^. Chap. XH. II I 1 \ 1 I jilliulod to some Indians settled near Gny- licad, a remnant of the aborigines, who have been protected by the Government of INIassachii setts, all sales of land by them to the whites being null and void by law. They make excellent sailors in the whale-fishery of the South Seas, a source of great wealth to the inhabitants of " the Vineyard," and of New Bedford on the main land. That occui)ation, with all its privations and dangers, seems admirably suited to the bodily constitution and hereditary instinct of a hunter tribe, to whom steady and continuous labour is irksome and injurious. The history of the extermination of the aboriginal Indians of New England is a melancholy talc, es- pecially after so many successful exertions had been made to educate and christianize them. "When at Harvard College, a copy of the Bible was shown me by Mr. Jared Sparks, translated by the missionary Father Elliott into the Indian tongue. It is now a dead language, although preached for several genera- tions to crowded congregations. On my return across the Vineyard from Gayhead I saw several spotted tortoises with red heads migra- ting from one pond of fresh water to another. On the sea-shore another novelty attracted my notice — seve- ral large specimens of the King Crab (Limulus polyphemus) were crawling about in the salt-water pools left by the sea on the retiring of the tide. ■■i\ Chap. XI II. BOSTON. 261 CHAPTER XIII. Mcrfhig of Association of American Geologists at Boston. — Popular libraries in Nciv Enfflaud. — Large sale of literary works in the United States. — American universities. — Harvard College^ near Boston. — English univer-sitics. — Peculiarities of their \system. — Historical sketch of the causes of these pecU' liarities not of medieval origin. — Collegiate corporations. — Their altered relation to the English universities after the Beformation, — Constitidion given to Oxford by Leicester and Laud. — System of public teaching, how superseded by the collegiate. — Effects of the change. — Oxford Examination StatiUe of 1 800. — Its subsequent modification and results. — Bise of private tutoi's at Oxford and Cambridge. — Consequences of this innovation. — Struggle at Oxford in 1 839 to restore the professorial system. — Causes of its rejection. — Tractarian- ism. — Supremacy of ecclesiastics. — Youthful examiners. — Cambridge. — Advocacy of the system followed the?'e. — In- fluence of the English academical plan on the cultivation of the physical sciences, and all branches of progressive knowledge. — Bemedies and reforms. • I. April 25. — I returned to Boston to attend the third annual meeting of the Association of American Geolo- gists, who had held their previous meetings of 1840 and 1841 at Philadelphia. On the present occasion Dr. Morton took the chair, and in the course of the week i^apers were read and freely discussed on a va- riety of scientific questions by many of the leading i I 262 MEETINC; OF C;EOLOGlST3. Chap. XIII. \\\ \H Aiuericiui geologists, some of whom had come from distant parts of the Union. Tlie i)atronagc afforded by the state surveys has created a numerous ehiss both of practised observers and able writers. Among those engaged in these government undertakings, who took part in these proceedings, I may mention Professor Hitchcock, of jVIassachusetts, Professor W. B. Kogers, of Virginia, Professor II. D. Rogers, of Pennsyl- vania, ]VIr. Vanuxem, Dr. Emmons, INIr. Hall, and Dr. Beck — all engaged on the survey of New York ; Dr. Jackson, who has surveyed Rhode Island, Xew Hampshire, and Maine ; and Dr. Locke, of Ohio. There were also present Professor Silliman and his son, ]\Iessrs. Nicollet, Redfield, Gould, Bailey, Dana, Couthouy, Ilaldeman, Hubbard, J. L. Hayes, and others, all known as authors or contributors to scien- tific publications. The structure of the Alleghany Hills, and of the coal-fields of America, the origin of coral reefs, the glacial theory, the effects of icebergs, the nature of the foot-marks in the red sandstone of Connecticut valley, and other subjects, were de- bated upon during the week, in an animated but most amicable style. The citizens of Boston, learn- ing that means were wanting for the publication of a series of valuable memoirs, read at this and former meetings of the association, came forward with their usual liberality, and supplied funds, by aid of which Chap. Xlir. nOSTOX. — rURLIC REQUESTS. 203 a volume entitled " Transactions of the Assoeiatlon of American Geologists for 1840-42," a work reflect- ing the liigliest credit on the cultivators of geology and its kindred sciences in America, made its ai)i)car- ance soon afterwards. Munificent bequests and donations for public pur[)oses, whether charitable or educational, form a striking feature in the modern history of the United States, and especially of New England. Not only is it connnon for rich capitalists to leave by will a portion of their fortune towards the endowment of national institutions, but individuals during their lifetime make magnificent grants of money for the same objects. There is here no com- pulsory law for the equal jiartition of property among children, as in France, and, on the other hand, no custom of entail or primogeniture, as in England, so that the affluent feel themselves at liberty to share their wealth between their kindred and the public; it being impossible to found a family, and parents having frequently the happiness of seeing all their children well provided for and independent long before their death. I have seen a list of bequests and donations made during the last thirty years, for the benefit of religious, chari- table, and literary institutions, in the State of Massachusetts alone, and they amounted to no less n I ■*frw0 1' '^^ima^^^mnn T« ( i\ 264 SALE OF BOOKS. Chap. XIII. > . i, ! a sum than six millions of dollars, or more than a million sterling. There are popular libraries in almost every village of Massachusetts, and a growing taste for the reading of good books is attested by the sale of large editions of such works as Herschel's Natural Phi- losophy, Washington Irving's Columbus, and Plu- tarch's Lives. Of each of these, from five to twenty thousand copies have been sold. It will seem still more remarkable, that no less than sixteen thousand copies have been purchased of Johnes's Translation of Froissart's Chronicles, illustrated by wood-en- gravings, and twelve thousand of Liebig's Animal Chemistry. These editions were very cheap, as there was no author's copyright ; but it is still more surprising, that about four thousand copies of Prescott's Mexico should have been sold in one year in the U. S. at the price of six dollars, or about twenty-six shillings. When, in addition to these signs of the times, we remember the grants before alluded to, of the New England and other states in behalf of public schools and scientific surveys, we may indulge very sanguine hopes of the future progress of this country towards a high standard of general civilization. ^ . The universities of the United States are annually increasing in number, and their discipline in New Chap. XIII. AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. 265 England (to which my Inquiries on this head were chiefly confined) is very strict ; a full staff of pro- fessors, with their assistants or tutors, superintending at once the moral conduct and intellectual culture of the students. In each university, there is a divinity- school, appropriated to some particular religious denomination, which is Presbyterian or Independent at Newhaven, in Connecticut, where there are about six hundred students; and Unitarian at Harvard College, near Boston, where there are about four hundred. But youths belonging to various sects resort indifferently to Newhaven, Harvard, and other colleges, to pursue their ordinary academical studies. After obtaining their first degree, they enter, if intended for the ministry, some theological faculty established in the same or in another uni- versity, or constituting a separate institution for the professional training of future divines. The Epis- copalians have a flourishing college of this kind in the State of New York. The Independents, or Congregatioualists, have one at Andover in Massa- chusetts, where a distinguished professor of biblical learning has been known to draw Episcopalian « and students of other sects to his lectures, no persons being excluded, by subscription to articles of religion, from entering and studying in any college. The multiplication of academical establishments, VOL. I. N P If! I ii 266 UNIVERSITIES IN SCOTLAND. Chap. XIII. i ' i ; Ii ' in consequence of every State, and every sect of Christians in each State, being ambitious of having schools of their own, is an evil, but one which ■would be greatly aggravated were the general as well as the theological education in the universities alike sectarian ; or if students of classical literature, mathematics, law, and medicine, all required teachers who agreed with them in every article of faith. It has been remarked, by a living satirist, that the force of sectarian animosity, like that of gravity, increases inversely as the squares of the distance; but, in spite of the occasional ebullition in recent times of an intolerant spirit on both sides of the Atlantic, there are many auspicious signs of the approach of an era when differences of religious opinion will less interfere with national systems of education, both in schools and colleges. The present state of acade- mical aftairs in Scotland will perhaps be thought incon- sistent with this view, where one party has been endea- vouring to expel from the universities all professors who favour " free church " opinions, while the seceders from the establishment, not satisfied with a new divinity-school, have aimed at a new uni- versity for general instruction. There is now reason, however, to hope that the last-mentioned project will fail. There are already too many academical institutions in Scotland, in proportion to the means of Chap. XIII. SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 267 adequately remunerating the professors ; and their farther impoverishment, by the withdrawal of stu- dents from them to a new college, would be an injury to science and civilisation. The policy of the government in 1836, when an attempt was made to unite King's and Marischal Colleges at Aberdeen, was wise and statesmanlike, but it was baffled by the local jealousies of the two ancient rivals. Every eiFort should now be made to confine the new aca- demical foundation to the faculty of theology ; and, for the same reason, to prevent the establishment of rival parochial schools, for the existing parish schools are often at present inadequately supported. It is deplorable enough to be compelled to admit the necessity of any new academical establishment, when we reflect that there is absolutely no differ- ence of doctrine between the new rival churches in Scotland; and that the points of dissent have been deemed for a century and a half of such subordinate importance, as not to afford justifiable grounds for an open breach. In the Irish College at Belfast, endowed by government, a professor of Greek of acknowledged ability, nominated originally by the crown, with the approbation of the Presby- terians, has suddenly been deprived of the greater part of his class in consequence of the " free church " movement, althougli no blame is imputed to him on N 2 268 HARVARD COLLEGE. Chap. XIII. ! S il I i « the score of a proselytising spirit, or of a wish to inculcate his own religious views. In the midst of these and other discouraging circumstances, it is satisfactory to observe, that three out of the five Scotch universities have recently declared to Parlia- ment their desire that the religious tests which now shackle them and impair their efficacy may be removed. In no subject do the Americans display more earnestness than in their desire to improve their system of education, both elementary and academical. They have sent missionaries to Europe, who have published elaborate reports on the methods of teaching now employed in Britain, Germany, Holland, and France, and they seem ready to adopt whatever appears worthy of imitation in these different models. The great difficulty under which they labour, and one inevitable in a new country, and common to them and the British American colonies, is the early age at which young men quit college, sooner by at least two years than in England. In Harvard College, Cambridge, near Boston, the best endowed university in the United States, there are thirty-two professors, each assisted by one or more tutors. Many of them are well known in the literary world as authors. Five only of the thirty- two were educated for the pulpit, three of whom are Chap. XIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 269 professors of divinity, one of ethics, and one of history. All the students are required to attend divine service in the churches to which they se- verally belong, but the divinity-school for pro- fessional education is Unitarian. The pupils are examined in the New Testament, also in Palcy's " Evidences," and Butler's " Analogy." The pro- portion of professors to students (about 400 in number) is far greater than that of college tutors in the English universities. The tutors of Har- vard College may be compared, in some degree, to our private tutors, except that they are more under the direction of the professors, being selected by them from among the graduates, as the best scholars, and each is specially devoted to some one department of learning. These tutors, from whose number the professors are very commonly chosen, usually teach the freshmen, or first-year students, or prepare pupils for the professors' lectures. Care is also bestowed on the classification of the young men, according to their acquirements, talents, and tastes. To accomplish this object, the student, on entering, may offer to undergo an examination, and, if he succeeds, he may pass at once into the second, third, or fourth year's class, the inter- mediate steps be*.ng dispensed with; he may also choose certain subjects of study, which arc regarded N 3 270 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. Chap. XIII. f I li \ as equivalents, or arc exchangeable with others. Thus, in the four years of the regular academical course, a competent knowledge of Latin, Greek, and of various branches of mathematics, is exacted from all ; but, in regard to other subjects, such as moral phi- losophy, modern languages, chemistry, mineralogy, and geology, some of them may be substituted for others, at the option of the pupil. There are public ex- aminations at the end of every term for awarding honours or ascertaining the proficiency of students ; who, if they have been negligent, are put back into a previous year's class, the period of taking their degree being in that case deferred. Honours are obtainable for almost every subject taught by any professor; but emulation is not relied upon as the chief inducement for study. After passing an ex- amination for the fourth year's class, the student can obtain the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and may enter the divinity, medical, or law schools. Every inquiry into the present state of the universities in America drew forth from my in- formants, in return, many questions respecting Oxford and Cambridge. I was asked by professors of geology, chemistry, modern history, modern liter- ature, and other branches of knowledge, why the classes for these subjects had recently fallen off in the English universities? was their decline to be Chap. XIII. TECULIARITIES OF SYSTL2I. 271 ascribed to tractarianism, a form of religious doctrine which, they said, had been recently transplanted into the United States, and was growing vigorously in the new soil ? I declared my conviction that the tractarian movement at Oxford had been rather one of the effects of the slow and gradual changes introduced in modern times into the system of in- struction there, than the cause of the recent banish- ment from that seat of learning of many sciences formerly taught there. The more I endeavoured to explain the present state of our academical course of study, and the peculiar organisation of the corps of teachers to whom its superintendence is confided, the more strange it appeared to my New England friends ; and I myself became the more aware of its distinctive and a?iomalous character, when contrasted with the methods followed elsewhere. Many who have been educated, like myself, at Oxford, are ignorant of the system of education formerly acted upon in our English universities, and of the real nature or causes of the present state of things. I shall, therefore, attempt to give, in the remainder of this chapter, a brief account of the leading pecu- liarities of our former and present academical ma- chinery, and to point out its inevitable consequence, the very limited range of studies which can be pur- sued, so long as things remain unaltered. I shall do N 4 "fi I 272 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. Chap. XIII. ' '. tu I '« 1 this the more willingly, because I know that any information which may throw light on the subject will be equally interesting to my readers on both sides of the Atlantic. It may awaken curiosity in those who have never made any inquiries into these matters, if I make one or two preliminary statements. In the first place, then, the mass of students or undergraduates at Oxford is divided into twenty-four separate com- munities or colleges, very unequal in number, the residents in each varying from 10 in the smaller to about 140 in the larger colleges, and the whole business of educating these separate sections of the youth is restricted to the tutors of the separate colleges. Consequently, two or three individuals, and occasionally a single instructor, may be called upon to give lectures in all the departments of human knowledge embraced in the academical course of four years. If the college be small, there is only occupation and salary sufficient to support one tutor ; any attempt, therefore, to subdivide the different branches of learning and sciences among distinct teachers is abandoned. There is no opportunity for one man to concentrate the powers of his mind on a single department of learning, to en- deavour to enlarge its bounds, and carefully to form and direct the opinions of his pupil. In a few of the Chap. XIII. ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 273 larger colleges, indeed, some rude approach to such a partition is made, so far as to sever the mathematical from the classical studies ; but even then the tutors in each division, are often called upon, in the public examinations, to play their part in both depart- ments. Thus, a single instructor gives lectures or examines in the writings of the Greek and Roman historians, philoso])hcrs, and poets, together with logic, the elements of mathematics, and theo- logy. For the benefit of my foreign readers, it may be as well to remark, that the scholars to be taught are not boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, at which latter age the degree of Bachelor of Arts was very commonly conferred in the olden times at Oxford, but young men between eighteen and twenty- two, who, at the expiration of their academical course, usually quit college, and enter at once upon a profession, or into political life. In the next place, I may state, that the choice of teachers, to whom so arduous and ambitious a task is allotted, is by no means left open to free competition, like the professor- ships in most ancient and modern universities ; but, on the contrary, is confined within very narrow bounds. The college tutors are selected from graduates Avho are on the foundation of their respective colleges, and who may have obtained their appointment ori- N 5 274 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. Chap. XIII. ginally, some because they happened to be founder's kin, or were educated at a particular school, others because they were born in a particular town, county, or diocese; a few only being selected from merit, or as having distinguished themselves in examina- tions open to all candidates. This latter class, how- ever, has, it is true, increased of late years. Most of these teachers forfeit their fellowships, and most probably with it their office of tutor, if they should marry, or if, after a certain number of years, they do not embrace the clerical profession. They also look to preferment in the Church, from their position in their college, so that they have every inducement to regard the business of teaching as a temporary calling, subordinate and subsidiary to another, of a different, and to them more advantageous and important, kind. Their office as instructors is, in short, a mere step- ping-stone to something else ; and they hope to gain their reward, not when they are superannuated, for then they would be unfit for highly responsible eccle- siastical duties, but when they arc still in the prime of life. In fact, their promotion is so contrived, as at once to cut short the career of usefulness in which they may have hitherto distinguished them- selves. It will naturally be taken for granted, by those who have never investigated the history of tlie univer- CUAP. XIII. ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 275 sities, that the restrictions and fetters above enumerated are all of monastic and medieval origin. The celibacy of the teachers, the almost entire monopoly of tuition by the clergy, seem clearly to point to a period more remote than the Keformation, and when the supremacy and exorbitant power of the church of Rome were still at their height. But nothing can be fiirthcr from the truth. On inquiry, we learn with surprise, that the original plan of education at Oxford and Cam- bridge, as in the other European universities, was public and common to the whole mass of students. The present system has been upheld by no blind ve- neration for ancient usages, nor by the conservative principle carried to excess. There has been no dread of innovation exhibited in modern times. The sub- stitution of the collegiate for a more general univer- sity scheme of instruction is the result of a modern revolution, altogether subsequent to the era of the Keformation, and no small part of it is a creation of yesterday, devised at the close of the eighteenth, and only carried out since the commencement of the nineteenth, century. In order to understand how the colleges, or a few private corporations, obtained their ascendency over our two great national institutions, it is necessary to revert to the history of those early ages when the European universities originated. It appears that N 6 276 COLLEGIATE CORPORATIONS. Chap. XIII. ¥ i I ' there was often a prodigious concourse of students to tliosc seats of learning wliere the public teachers ac- quired celebrity. Wc may refuse to credit sonic old chroniclers, who reckon the number at Oxford and elsewhere at ten, twenty, and even thirty thousand ; but it is certain that the scholars were often so crowded together in small towns, as to be exposed to great hardships, owing to the exorbitant price demanded for board and lodging. Benevolent individuals, who commiserated the sufferings of the poorer students, were induced from time to time to found houses, where they might obtain accommodation, and some- times board, free of expense. Those who were not on such foundations were required, whether graduates or undergraduates, to belong to some Hall, or Inn, the head of which was usually elected by the scholars, and api)roved of by the chancellor of the university, or his deputy. As a large part of the students were boys, corresponding in age to those now educated at our public schools, they were placed under the special guardianship of some tutor, who was expected to look to their orderly behaviour, their religious exercises, and even, as appears by the old statutes, to " see that they conformed to academical rules in regard to matters of external appearance, such as their clothes, boots, and hair." It was the duty of the head of each house to see that the tutors were fit for their office, and to CuAi». XIII. COLLEGIATE COUPOIIATIONS. 277 take care tliat the pupils attended the lectures of tlie public renders, or Masters of Arts, who gave lectures in the Schools. On the Continent, rho houses founded for the sup- port of indigent teachers and scholars were entirely subjected to the authorities of their respective uni- versities; but in England several of the colleges were governed by private statutes, over which the university exercised no control. Hence they had often interests apart from those of the university and of the public ; but for centuries they were few in number, there being only three colleges in Oxford in the fourteenth century ; whereas there were three hun- dred halls, or licensed boarding-houses, each sustained by the private contributions of students. At length the Reformation worked suddenly a complete revolu- tion in the relative position of the collegiate corpora- tions and the academical body at large. The religious schism banished many students who did not acquiesce in the new opinions. The temper of Henry the Eighth was so capricious and uncertain, and the policy of his three immediate Successors so contradic- tory, that it was difficult to know what was the reli- gion by law established for the current year ; still less possible to calculate what would be the statutable or- thodoxy for the year ensuing. Keasonable fears were also entertained that, as the monastic property 278 HISTORY OF Chap. XIII. If I had been confiscated, the endowments of the univer- sities might not long be spared, so that literature and the church were uninviting professions, whether for ambitious or conscientious men.* The halls, depending for their support on the confluence of students, were ruined, except a few which were connected with certain colleges. Land and houses fell in value in Oxford, so that the colleges were able to purchase considerable pro- perty from the impoverished burghers for a trifling con- sideration. Four new colleges were established within half a century subsequent to the Reformation, and altogether six during the sixteenth century, some of which were built on tli : sites of suppressed monaste- ries, or on land obtained by grants from the crown, or purchased for an insignificant pr'ce. After this period, only one college was founded — in 1610; and three of the eight remaining halls changed into col- leges, in 1610, 1702, and 1740. Originally few of the colleges admitted undergra- duates not on the foundation ; but they now opened their gates, and were able to include the whole acade- mical population within their walls, by w^hich they ob- * For many details respecting the early constitution of the universities of Paris and Oxford, and the subsequent changes in the English Universities, see an article by Sir William Hamilton, Bart., who was educated at Oxford, and is now Pro- fessor of Logic in the University of Edinburgh, Edin. lleview, No. xcvi., June, 1831. Chap. XIII. ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 279 taincd a preponderating weight and influence. This power, however, might have been defeated, if the Earl of Leicester, chancellor of the university, had not ob- tained, in 1570, an exclusive right to institute new halls, which was afterwards by statute vested in his successors. As the chief magistrate acted usually in concert with the heads of colleges, it was henceforth easy for the colleges to prevent any new hall from interfering with their monopoly ; whereas, previously to 1570, the establishment of a hall was easy, it being only required that a small number of scholars should hire a house, find caution for a year's rent, and choose for principal a graduate of respectable character. The chancellor, or his deputy, could not, in that case, refuse to sanction his appointment. The new constitution, procured for the university by Leicester, was considerably modified under the chancellorship of Archbishop Laud, who raised the heads of houses to the rank of a public body, called the Hebdomadal Board, to whom the privilege was given of proposing new laws to the House of Convocation. To the latter, consisting of the doctors and the masters of arts, the supreme legislation was still left, but without the power of initiating any measures. The heads were, by the constitution of their colleges, almost all ecclesiastics, and chosen from among the fellows of their respective colleges. 1 280 OXFORD. Chap. XIII. m ! i : Their election was, therefore, subject to all the disabilities and restrictions imposed on the fellows by the caprice of the founder. Thus two new elements, the preponderating influence of clerical over lay rulers, and the fortuitous restrictions in- vented for the regulation of private corporations, entered suddenly, and as it were accidentally, into the legislative constitution of the university. From this period, it was almost inevitable, that the predilections of men of one profession, and the private interests of certain corporate bodies, should modify, if not remodel, the whole acadcuical system, and frequently prevail over interests of a more general and national character. Soon after the university had begun to recover from the shock of the Re- formation, several new readerships and professorships were endowed by Laud, and several others in the next century, after his time, in aid of that system of public instruction in the schools, which had been conducted originally by certain Masters of Arts, who were required to read and expound diflTerent subjects. The teaching of the undergraduates was now, therefore, divided between the colleges and the public instructors appointed by the university. The latter would have regained their former ascendancy, if they had been supported by the Heads of houses, who were intrusted with the charge of watching «;;!• Chap. XIII. COLLEGE TUTORS. 281 over the observance of statutes, and all " scho- lastic improvements." But they (the Heads) no longer obliged the students to attend public lectures regularly; and they frequently allowed some of the professors to desist from lecturing altogether, which many of them, from indolence, and from finding their audiences fall off, were disposed to do, especially as their instructions were given gratis. Such was the ordinary custom in the old universities; but in later times it had been found that this arrange- ment was very defective, that the professors were negligent, and that the students undervalued what cost them nothing, so that fees were permitted to be exacted. In Oxford, however, the professors were supplanted, in respect to these fees, by the college tutor, to whom a large part of the business of education was thus gradually transferred. Had a different course been adopted, the professors, acquiring in many cases celebrity in their respective departments, and devoted permanently, and often enthusiastically, to the sciences they taught, would have married and settled for life in Oxford; they would have gained an ascendancy over the minds of the students and the younger graduates in convo- cation ; and many of them would have acquired an European reputation. The colleges might naturally feel jealous of alloAving the growth of such a coun- 282 OXFORD. Chap. XIII. I; ii terpoisG to the power with which they had been recently invested. When the old machinery Avas thus falling into disuse, and before the plan of college tuition was fully organised, the academical discipline appears to have been extremely lax, and the provision for education defective in the extreme. It was often difficult to find a college tutor competent to undertake the office, and there was occasionally only one or two of the resident fellows willing to accept of it. Instead of these important places being open to a free and fair competition, we may say that they were often held by self-appointed teachers. A regulation was made, that all the undergraduates should lodge within the walls of some college, which had the effiict of preventing students from freely selecting those tutors who had the highest reputation, as rooms within the walls were soon filled, and no overflow was allowed of pupils lodging in the town. The enforcement of this law was said to have been jealously watched by some colleges, which would otherwise have been all but deserted, towards the close of the last century. The numerous scholar- ships and other endowments of the university, the college livings, and the academical degrees required as qualifications for entering holy orders, rendered the university very independent of public opinion; Chap. XIII. EXAMINATION STATUTE OF 1800. 283 and whether it taught nothing efficiently, or failed to accommodate its form of instruction to the pro- gress and spirit of the age, it could never apprehend a serious diminution of students. Occasionally, there were examinations and a revival of studious habits in a particular college, or some pro- fessor gave a popular course of lectures, and drew large audiences. Thus Bradley, the famous astrono- mer, delivered, between the years 1746 and 1760, to a class of pupils averaging 57 in number, lectures on Natural Philosophy, not in Latin, as had been the old practice, but in English. But the general indolence of the instructors, and the idleness and dissipation of the young men, became so notorious and flagrant towards the close of the eighteenth century, that a reform was loudly called for, and the governing body became deeply impressed with a sense of its expediency. Many plans were devised for carrying it into effect. As the annual or terminal examinations in several colleges had been found most useful in maintaining orderly habits among the young men, it was proposed to improve the public examinations, which had be- come a mere form, and to compel every one to pass them before obtaining his degree of Bachelor of Arts. Honours were to be awarded to those who distin- guished themselves. It was now evident that the shape in which <- f I i I '• t ■ I .' t I . I 284 OXFORD. Chap. XIII. this new statute was framed would determine what studies should henceforth be encouraged or dis- couraged in the university. It was clearly jiointed out, at the time, that all those subjects which could not lead to academical distinctions would be virtually proscribed ; and that the well-known maxim of our lawyers in the interpretation of statutes would hold good in this case, " De non apparentibus et de non existentibus eadem est ratio." Whatever science was omitted in the list of studies selected for the trial of strength would be henceforth not merely slighted, but virtually blotted out of the academical course. Academical honours were here no empty bubbles, but might be expected to lead to fellowships, tutorships, livings, and other solid advantages. If the Heads of Houses and Members of Convocation had been simply legislating for national objects, and had not been the representatives of private and collegiate interests, which were not always identical with those of the public, it would have been easy to devise a comprehensive system of examinations, consisting of several boards, to which the professors, as well as tutors, would have been appointed, in stricter accor- dance with the spirit, and even letter, of the old sta- tutes, than the new law which was then enacted. But this might soon have altered entirely the relative posi- tion in which the college tutors now stood to the public AP. XIII. Chap. XIII. EXAMINATION STATUTE OF 1800. 286 e what or dis- pointed which uld be maxim tatutcs entibus [latever :ted for merely lemical emj)ty vvships. If the on had nd had legiate 1 those 3vise a ting of veil as accor- >ld sta- l. But ^e potfi- public readers and professors. The latter would soon have acquired greater consequence in convocation ; and had such a measure been proposed by the Hebdomadal Board it would probably have been lost. Accordingly, it was soon found that the new examination statute of the year 1800 was to be worked by the college tu- tors, young men for the most part about thirty years of age ; and such being the case, no one can deny that studies embracing the Greek and Boman writers on history, philosophy, poetry, logic, rhetoric, and ethics, besides Christian theology, and the elements of mathe- matics, Avas as extensive a range as was compatible with such an executive. If they erred, their error certainly consisted in enlarging the circle of subjects far beyond the capacity of the college tutor, be his talents ever so great. The legislators especially displayed discretion in excluding from the schools all the more progressive branches of knowledge ; for, in order to be a safe guide in directing the opinions of a pupil, or teaching what is known in such branches, liable as they are to be modified from year to year, by new facts, dis- coveries, and investigations, the preceptor must have leisure to devote his mind exclusively to one subject. The new statute did not pass without a severe struggle. The rector of Lincoln College, in parti- cular, opposed it, as a measure that would extinguish all " thirst of knowledge." " There would henceforth," he 1 1 Hi 286 OXFORD EXAMINATIONS. CUAP. XIII. said, "be no university at all, but a system of cramming and partial teaching, after which the student would go out into the world with a narrow mind and darker understanding." The necessity, however, of preparing for the com- pulsory examination, before taking a degree, worked immediately a salutary change in the habits and moral conduct of the idler students. The more clever and ambitious amongst them began to be excited by the competition for honours ; a marked improvement was soon apparent in academical discipline ; the uni- versity gained in public favour, and the number of students increased. The classes even of some of the professors were strengthened ; but this effect was of short duration. It was soon found that the honours awarded at the examinations led to fellowships and tutorships ; and the honourable rivalry of many of the colleges induced them to throw open their fellowships and scholarships much more freely than formerly to candidates of the highest merit; the standard of merit, however, being, for the most part, measured by the new examinations in the schools. New methods were from time to time invented for classifying the youths according to their intellectual qualifications. In 1807, students who distinguished themselves were arranged in two classes, in 1809 in three, and in 1826 in four. A preliminary examination, called the responsions, or AP. XIII. Chap. XIII. OXFORD TRIVATE TUTORS. 287 iimming t would I darker lie corn- worked its and e clever jited by >vement the uni- mber of e of the t was of honours lips and y of the owships aerly to f merit, by the ids were youths nl807, rranged in four, iions, or " little go," was introduced at the end of the first two years, or in the middle of the student's residence at Ox- ford. The examinations for degrees were made more and more stringent, and emulation at length stimulated to so high a pitch, that health was often sacrificed in the effort to gain the prize. Useful habits of appli- cation were often acquired, but the system was not calculated to foster a love of knowledge for its own sake. To some there was even danger of injury both bodily and mental ; for if they succeeded, they were tempted to believe that they had already achieved something great ; if they failed, their abilities were underrated, both by themselves and their contempo- raries. Another important revolution now took place. As the business of education had previously passed from the public readers and professors to the college tutors, so the latter were now in no small degree superseded by the private tutors or " crammers." These were graduates chosen by the young men themselves, at an expense of 40/. or 50/. a year, to read with them, both in term-time and vacation, and prejiare them for the examination. An Oxford tutor informed me that, in the years 1840 and 1841, no less than 250, or one fifth of the resident stu- dents, procured this kind of assistance, the aggregate sum paid by them amounting to more than 10,000/. :;| 288 OXFORD TRIVATE TUTORS. Chap. XIII. I\ {f lit n year ! These young teachers watch the examin- ations, are acquainted with the style of the questions, whether vivd voce or on paper, and often with the peculiar views of the examiner. It is their business to prevent their pupil from wasting his strength on topics not likely to be adverted to, and often to enable him to get by rote answers to certain interrogatories. The students are frequently unable to obtain this aid from the college tutor, whose system of lecturing is more general, and who cannot direct his attention to the individi;;.:! wants and capacities of every pupil. The under- graduates, therefore, may be required to attend, be- tween ten and one o'clock, the lectures of the college tutors. The next two hours (from one to three) are generally occupied by the private tutorv-. comprising that portion of the day during which the professors are by statute required to lecture. At three o'clock, it is high time for the young men to seek recreation and exercise ; so that all the youths, especially the cleverest ones, are so entirely absorbed in a routine of study connected with the examinations, that the professorial class-rooms must unavoidably be aban- doned. Bachelors of arts, and other graduates, had been heretofore in the habit of attending public lectures; but most of them now became engrossed with the new and lucrative business of cramming. r. XIII. Chap. XIII. miVATE TUTORS AT CAMBRIDGE. 289 samin- jstions, 1 with i their ng his :o, and ers to [ucntly tutor, il, and ividij 1 under- nd, be- college •ee) are prising )fessors o'clock, rcation lly the routine lat the aban- es, had public xrossed mg. We learn from Dr. Peacock, now Dean of Ely, for many years an eminent tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge, that in that university, also, a similar revolution took place nearly at the same time.* " A large proportion," he says, " of all the students, industrious or idle, rich or poor, resort to private tutors, to whom they pay, on an average, about 40/. a year. These teachers," he continues, " are young and inexperienced, and not competent to convey enlarged views " to their pupils. The labour imposed on them is too absorbing and severe to allow of the simultaneous prosecution of original studies ; and " this unhappy system has contributed, more than any other cause, to the very general, and, in some respects, just complaints, which have been made of late years, of the paucity of works of learning and research which had issued from the University of Cambridge." And here I may observe, that it is often the boast of writers who extol our university system above that of other countries, that we promote liberal studies, and do not condescend to qualify students for a lucrative profession or trade. But what is the real fact ? Do not the majority of the ablest students toil at Latin, Greek, and mathematics, with * See his excellent work on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge, p. loG. VOL. I. O If I I t •t 290 mOFESSIOXAL EDUCATION. Chap. XIII. purely professional objects ? Are they not preparing tlicmsclves for becoming private tutors, schoolmasters, and college-tutors ; expecting to combine these avo- cations with fellowships, or with clerical duties? Arc not the things they learn regarded as the means of earning a livelihood, or what the Germans call " Brodstudien," in plain English, to " make the pot boil?" That some students should be qualifying themselves at the university to become masters in our public schools is highly desirable; and it would be well if the station in society of the schoolmaster, apart from any adventitious aid derived from unit- ing with it the clerical function, ranked as high in England as it docs in Germany and the New- England States; but why should not the utilitari- anism of our universities comprehend equally, within the sphere of its educational training, those branches of general knowledge which are equally essential to the future statesman, divine, lawyer, physician, and men of other liberal callings ? I am aware that it may be said, in regard to " crammers," that, under every system, some kind of private tuition will be required, and it will be asked, whether the assistants, under a professorial plan of instruction, would not be equally kept back in the improvement of their own minds ? Certainly not — they would divide themselves at once into 'I ' 1 1 : il ! '1^ Chap. XIII. rnivATi: tutors. 291 as many sections as there are clcpartmcnts of study recognised in the public examinations. They would devote tlicir minds steadily to subjects connected with theology, or with law, or medicine, or engineer- ing, or literary criticism, or applied mathematics, or other branches. Occasionally they would lecture for the professor, who, if worthy of his charge, must advance with his science, and not be ignorant of new discoveries and theories. Like him, they could not remain stationary. They would aspire in due time to fill his place, or some chair in another university. Such private tutors, whether lay or clerical, would not be found, at the expiration of ten years of hard and painful labour, precisely at the point from which they set out immediately after taking their first degree. In the year 1839, a last and most vigorous attempt was made at Oxford to restore the functions of the professorial body, which had now become contracted within the narrowest limits. The pro- fessors of Experimental Philosophy, Comparative Anatomy, Chemistry, ^Mineralogy, Geology, Botany, Geometry, and Astronomy, many of them well known in the literary and scientific world, sent in a repre- sentation to the heads of Houses, in which they declared their inability to discharge the duties they had undertaken, notwithstanding their unabated zeal o 2 i.2 N »!l f ■1 4 p' \ ^ ' 1 * 1 : 111 ;,| ■ 1 '1 1 : 292 PROPOSED REFORM Chap. XIII. and devotion. They accompanied their petition with a printed statistical table, showing how the number of their classes had fallen off annually, during a period in which, as they truly observed, the branches of knowledge taught by them were rising in popular favour and importance. It ap- peared by their table, that the anatomy class had dwindled between the years 1819 and 1838 to less than half, and that of astronomy to one fifth of its original numbers. The same had happened to the class of chemistry, between 1822 and 1838, many others having declined in the like ratio. The petitioners observed that, if no change were made in the examination statute, their usefulness as professors was at an end. A majority of the heads of Houses were favourable to a reform, and they consequently proposed a new examination statute, in which there was a provision requiring attendance on at least two series of professorial lectures, as a preliminary qualification for the bachelor of arts' degree. The subjects of the various professors' lectures were classified under two heads, and one course was to be selected by the student from each division. The professors were required to keep a register of attendance, and give certificates. Although a new board of examiners to bestow honorary distinctions was not part of this Chap. XIIT. AT OXFOIID IN 1839. 293 plan, the measure might eventually have led to this and other improvements. But it was now too late — reform wns beyond the power of the Hebdomadal Board. Several academical generations had grown up under the new order of things. The collegiate and private tutors were inte- rested in opposing the new provisions, and they were accordingly rejected in convocation. Yet while they threw out that part of the proposed statute which would have gone far towards reviving the professorial chairs, they passed another part requiring the pro- fessors of Astronomy, Experimental Philosophy, Che- mistry, Geology, Mineralogy, Anatomy, Botany, Medicine, Civil Law, English Law, Greek, Arabic, Sanscrit, Anglo-Saxon, Poetry, Modern History, and Political Economy, to deliver regular courses of lectures. They were, in fact, bound not only by ancient statutes to require the teachers above enumerated faithfully to discharge their duty, but in modern times, or since the examination sta- tute of 1800, they had sanctioned the foundation of new chairs, such as Experimental Philosophy, Mineralogy, Geology, Political Economy, and Sans- crit, and had accepted annual grants from the Crown to endow certain readerships. In homage, therefore, to the moral obligations they had incurred, not to render these new and old foundations nugatory, they continued o 3 '■I I • ■if 294 CHANGES OF SYSTEM Chap. XIII. M' ; i i\' 11 to exact an outward conformity to the statutes, by enforcing the delivery of lectures, the efficiency of which they allowed other parts of their system entirely to defeat. Their conduct reminds us of the orders issued by Charles the Fifth to offer up prayers throughout Spain for the deliverance of the Pope, while he suffered his army to retain him pri- soner in the Castle of St. Angelo. It must not be inferred, however, from the prece- ding observations, that I assume that the majority of the members of Convocation are not men of high principle, and animated with a conscientious desire of discharging faithfully their public duties. They and their predecessors probably did not at any moment deliberately plan or avow to themselves the line of policy which they have followed out so systematically, and with so much unity of purpose. The judgment of each generation has been constantly biassed by the same disturbing causes (the collegiate and clerical in- terests), which, like a current steadily setting one way, has insensibly carried the whole academical body out of its true course. In conformity to these interests, the original constitution has been gradually modified, and the system, when changed, has formed the minds of the succeeding generation, preparing it for new inno- vations, all conceived in the same spirit. If any single individual can be charged with a deliberate Chap. XIII. AT OXFORD. 295 purpose of altering, essentially, the ancient consti- tution of the university, it is probably Archbishop Laud. The year 1839 was memorable in Europe for another event, tending to prove how unpropitious to the cultivation of the physical sciences is the eccle- siastical spirit, whenever it obtains an undue powc: of interference with academical institutions. In the year alluded to, the first " congress " of scientific men took place in Italy. It assembled at Pisa, under the auspices of the enlightened prince who now reigns in Tuscany. The Pope interdicted all the professors of his colleges of Rome and Bologna, many of whom were prepared to co-operate warmly with the new association, from attending it. The papal prohibition was continued at the subsequent meetings at Turin, Florence, Milan^ and elsewhere. Nevertheless, the congress flourished, and, in spite of the Pontiff's oppo- sition, drew together many of the most distinguished men from all parts of Europe, and of Italy, beyond the confines of the States of the Church. It has also given to the world five costly volumes of valuable scientific memoirs, which, but for such patronage, might have remained unpublished to this day. Doubtless the vote of the Oxford Convocation in 1839 was influenced by various motives; among others, a conscientious contempt for that sham professorial o 4 p 1 .1 » ,1 -1 ./ H r I'll 29G OrrOSITION to proposed Chap. XIII. system which the graduates had so long contrasted with a reality, in the form of compulsory tutorial lectures and examinations, leading to degrees, and often followed by fellowships, livings, prebendal stalls, and bishoprics. In addition to these causes, it has been very generally understood that many, both of the college and private tutors, were opposed to the cultivation of the physical sciences on principle, on account of their alleged irreligious tendency. No one who reads some of the articles written by men who were fellows or tutors at Oxford, in the British Critic, against the " British Association for the Pro- motion of Science," can wonder that such reports were credited, or that they provoked, from a prelate edu- cated at Oxford, the remark that " men who entertain such fears seem to forget that the book of Nature and the book of Revelation were both written by the same Author." Men are prone to undervalue those branches of knowledge which are foreign to their own pur- suits; and if physicians, or lawyers, or civil en- gineers, had usurped as decided an ascendency in the legislation of a university, as the clerical gra- duates have now acquired at Oxford, complaints as loud and well founded might have been heard, that a due share of attention was not bestowed on studies connected with theology. In this spirit, therefore. Chap. XIII. REFORM AT OXFORD. 297 it was attempted to mix up religious instruction with the teaching of other subjects. By some tutors it was held desirable that all ethics, metaphysics, and phi- losophy should be " christianized." The practice of taking up for the examinations for honours such works as Butler's Analogy and Ser- mons had been encouraged after the year 1830, Avhcn a statute had passed " that the philosophy of the an- cients might be illustrated in the schools, ' ex neoteri- corum scriptis,' or by the writings of the moderns." This and other changes had opened the door for considerable modifications in the course of academical study, and had given a new turn to the thoughts of many of the most rising and talented young men. It should be remembered that the last ten years has been the era of the Tractarian movement at Oxford, and the active intellect of the university has been for the most part absorbed in theological controversy. He who aspired to honours was bound in prudence to consider that his young judge, the arbiter of his acade- mical fate, might probably be an advocate of the views set forth in some one or more of the Tracts for the Times. He might be one who was fully impressed with the dogma, that " ethics unconnected with the church is a fundamental fallacy ;" that " man without the church has no right to educate man * ; " that * See Sewell'a Cliristian Morals, ch. iv. and x. o 5 ■-■.n^^^'*»•Nl *i» iw >»*f.>*^ * 1 y ;i h f • t ! . i 298 niOFESSORIAL LECTURES Chap. XIII. " youth is too .apt to delight in the inductive, instead of the deductive, reasoning ; " — " to prefer novelty to an- tiquity," investigation to obedience to authority, &c. As an example of the deductive process, as applied to my own favourite science, by a college tutor and public examiner of this period, I may cite a passage from lectures delivered in the university at the era under consideration, and since published : — " A geologist, deeply impressed with the mystery of baptism, by which a ' new creature,' KaLvrj ktI(tl9, is formed, by means of water and fire, would never have fallen into the absurdities of accounting for the formation of the globe solely by water or solely by fire. Pie would not have maintained either a Yul- canian or a Neptunian theory." * The reader may well imagine, that, if other departments of science were " christianized " after the like fashion, the scho- lar might run some risk of emerging into the world, from his academical career, with his reasoning powers enfeebled, and his intellects mystified. But to conclude our historical sketch. After the year 1839, we may consider three-fourths of the sciences, still nominally taught at Oxford, to have been virtually exiled from the University. The class rooms of the professors were some of them entirely, * See Sewell's Christian Morals, ch. xxii.. ' :, ^ 1 f; ■ I'M ■'r L^ Chap. XIII. ABANDONED AT OXFOKD. 299 others nearly, deserted. Chemistry and botany at- tracted, between the years 1840 and 1844, from three to seven students ; geometry, astronomy, and experimental philosophy, scarcely more ; mineralogy and geology, still taught by the same professor who, fifteen years before, had attracted crowded audiences, from ten to twelve; political economy still fewer ; even ancient history and poetry scarcely commanded an audience ; and, strange to say, in a country with whose destinies those of India are so closely bound up, the first of Asiatic scholars gave lectures to one or two pupils, and these might have been absent, had not the cherished hope of a Boden scholarship for Sanscrit induced them to attend. As if to complete the cycle of change, and to cause the system to depart as widely as possible from the original university, which secured for the students the services of pubhc and permanent teachers, men of mature age and acquirements, and often highly gifted, the Oxford tuition now fell, from year to year, into the hands of younger graduates, whether in the capacity of private tutors or examiners. Several causes had concurred to accelerate the pro- motion of college fellows. Their number was still the same, not having increased with church ex- tension, and the multiplication of new schools in a o 6 11: if^ ! ■I- H ill 1 1 ir ^ 300 PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS. Chap. XIII. growing population. It consequently became so difficult in many colleges to choose for tutors, fellows who were not manifestly too young, that, to remedy the evil, several heads of Houses wisely permitted men who had forfeited their fellowship by marriage to continue as tutors. It would appear, from the Oxford Calendar for 1835, that no less than seven of the Colleges, and four of the Halls, have been driven to this resource. Nevertheless, the majority of the body of public examiners is often under the age of thirty, and some of them only twenty-five years old ! They go out of office in succession, after serving for two years. On this fluctuating body of young men, responsible to no one for their decisions, whether in passing students for degrees, or in awarding honours, a body having the power of modifying at their ca- price the whole style and tenour of the public examinations, the direction of academical education in this great country has practically devolved ! At Cambridge, the collegiate influence has, since the Reformation, caused the university to pass gra- dually through nearly all the same phases as at Oxford. Here, also, the transference of the business of instruction from the public and permanent to the collegiate and temporary teacher, has coincided pre- cisely, in point of time, with greater strictness in the examinations, and more studious habits and Chap. XIII. CAMBRIDGE. 301 better discipline among the undergraduates. It is natural that, owing to this coincidence, a false notion should be engendered, that the subdivision of labour amongst a well organized body of professors is less effective than the method of college tuition. It might, perhaps, have been expected that such a subdivision would have been carried farther at Cam- bridge, in consequence of more than half the students being members of two, out of seventeen, colleges; namely, Trinity and St. John's. These noble founda- tions contain, each of them, from 400 to 500 under- graduates, and might almost be regarded, from their numerical strength, as universities of themselves. But although the fellowships in both of them are awarded to merit, the educational functions must be, comparatively speaking, of secondary importance to the fellow-tutor ; for, being almost invariably a clergyman, his highest hope of future preferment is not in the University, but in the Church. The proportion of students intending to take orders is not so large here as at Oxford, and they are not required to subscribe, on matriculation, any formula of religious belief, so that Roman Catholics and dissenters from the Church of England can study here, and obtain academical honours, though not degrees. The responsible duty of conducting the public examinations is even here in the hands of very : i ^ 1 i' 1 302 PROFESSORIAL LECTURES Chap. XIII. young men, though two of the mathematical profes- sors assist in awarding the Smith's Prize, the liighest mathematical honour; and the professor of Greek and the public orator, presumed to be a first-rate Latin scholar, preside in the examination for the Chancellor's medal for classics. Very recently at Cambridge, all branches of know- ledge taught by the professors — in a word, every subject except what is understood in our universities by classics and mathematics — have had sentence of banishment passed upon them in the form of new compulsory examinations, under the management of college tutors, the Oxford plan of awarding honours to classical and mathematical attainments alone being adhered to. The professors of chemistry and anatomy, who had formerly considerable classes, have only mustered six or seven pupils, although still compelled to give courses of fifty lectures each. The chairs of Modern History, and of the Application of Machinery to the Arts, once num- bering audiences of several hundreds, have been in like manner deserted. Yet dispensations are rarely granted for the discontinuance of useless duties, even when only two pupils present themselves. Moreover, here, as at Oxford, it is not uncommon to give such chairs as Mathematics, Natural Phi- losophy, Chemistry, Botany, Astronomy, Geology, Chap. XIII. ABANDONED AT CAMBRIDGE. 303 Mineralogy, and others, to clergymen, who combine tliem with clerical duties, or throw them up when they obtain preferment, and who, however eminent, owing, as they must do, a mixed allegiance, partly to their ecclesiastical order, and partly to the pro- fessorial body, cannot stand up with heart and courage in defence of the public, as opposed to the clerical and collegiate, interests. Dr. Whewell, now Master of Trinity, after many years' experience as a tutor at Cambridge, published, in 1837, his views on the plan of education adopted in the English universities. His arguments in favour of employing the learned languages as a main in- strument of education are unanswerable, and en- forced with great eloquence and power. " In what a condition should we be," he observes, "if our connection with the past were snapped — if Greek and Latin were forgotten?"* No less cogent are his reasons for cultivating mathematics as a means of strengthening the reasoning powers and disci- plining the mind. But when we come to that part of his treatise in which he attempts to defend the exclusive monopoly enjoyed by these subjects in the education of young men at Oxford and Cambridge, * Principles of University Education, London, 1837, ch. i. sect. 4. .1 304 ADVOCACY OF THE Chap. XIII. from the ages of eighteen to twenty-two, inchKling a period at the end of which tlie majority of them quit college altogether, his commendations of the system appear to me rather to resemble the plead- ings of an advocate, than those enlightened and philosophical views which characterise his works in general. Obedience and deference to authority arc held forth as if they were the chief and almost sole moral virtues to be instilled into the minds of young academicians. The students are treated more as boys and children than as men on the very point of entering on their several duties in life, and who ought, without loss of time, to be acquiring habits of thinking and judging for themselves. " Mathematical doctrines are fixed and perma- nent," says the historian of the Inductive Sci- ences, of whose remarks on this subject I shall give a brief abstract in his own words. " The old truths will always be true. In philosophical doctrines a constant change is going on. The old system is refuted, and a new one is erected. There is nothing old, nothing stable. The student cannot but suspect that his teacher and his teacher's creed are but for a day. The mind of a young man employed in attending to teachers of this kind must fail to acquire any steady conviction of the immutable and fixed nature of truth. He becomes a restless ClIAP. XIII. CAMBRIDGE SYSTEM. 305 speculator, criticising wliat has tilrcady been done in I)hilosophy, attempting to guess what will be the next step. He is placed in the position of a critic instead of a pupil." — " In mathematics, the teacher is usually the superior of his scholar, who entertains a docile and confiding disposition towards his in- structor. He cannot give or refuse his assent Avhen a system is proposed to him, nor feel in the situation of an equal and a judge. The subjects suitable for university teaching are the undoubted truths of mathematics, and works of unquestioned excellence, such as the best classical authors. When engaged in these, the student respects his instructor ; they are the fit subjects of college lectures. A spirit of criticism is awakened by the study of philosophy, which is a fit subject o? jrrofessorial lectures."* In commenting on the above j^assages, I cannot refrain from remarking, that if the teacher of phi- losophy cannot command the respect of his pupils, he must be ill-qualified for his post. No one who is master of his favourite science will fiiil to inspire the minds of his more intellectual scholars with a love of what he teaches, and a regard and admiration for their instructor. " Addicti jurare in verba magistri," they will be only too prone to prefer Plato to truth, * University Education, pp. 46 — 53. ' '^'^**»#* '*•■*' ■7 'in 1 if r i*; : 1, 'I i ,1 ■ ^l^ll l\.- 306 CLASSICS AND MATHEMATICS. Chap. XIII. and defend the professor's theory, even when he himself has seen reason to modify it in accordance with new facts and reasonings. When we inquire by what kind of training young men can best be prepared, before leaving the uni- versity, to enter upon the study or practice of their professions, whether as lawyers, physicians, clergy- men, schoolmasters, tutors, or legislators, can we assent to the notion that, by confining instruc- tion to pure mathematics, or the classical writers, more especially if the latter are not treated in a critical spirit, we shall best accomplish this end? Do not these belong precisely to the class of subjects in which there is least danger of the student's going wrong, even if he engages in them at home and alone ? Should it not be one of our chief objects to prepare him to form sound opinions in matters con- nected with moral, political, or physical science ? Here, indeed, he needs the aid of a trustworthy guide and director, who shall teach him to weigh evidence, point out to him the steps by which truth has been gradually attained in the inductive phi- losophy, the caution to be used in collecting facts and drawing conclusions, the prejudices which are hostile to a fair inquiry, and who, while his pupil is interested in the works of the ancients, shall remind him that, as knowledge is progressive, he must avail Chap. XIII. ENGLISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. 307 himself of the latest acquisitions of his own ao-e, in order to attain views more comprehensive and correct than those enjoyed even by predecessors of far superior capacity and genius. It may appear strange, that while such great sacrifices of time are made in England to the ex- clusive cul'ivation of classics, a larger proportion of the best modern editions of Greek and Latin authors are not the fruit of British scholarship. The cause, however, is easily explained. The highest excellence in literature or in science can only result from a life perseveringly devoted to one department. Such unity of purpose and concentration of power is wholly ineonsistent with our academical machinery of tuition. The panegyrists, indeed, of the modern university system in England, seem never to admit candidly this plain truth, that the colleges have no alternative in regard to the course of study open to them. Take any flourishing university in Great Britain or on the Continent, Berlin, for example, or Bonn, or Edinburgh, where a wide range of sciences are taught. Let the students be divided into fifteen or more sections, w ithout any classification in reference to their age, acquirements, talents, tastes, or future prospects. Assign to each section a separate set of teachers, chiefly clerical, and looking forward to .-:'%„.^.r--v J/' Il > i' I I f^ ^,' I r;i a:' 308 ENGLISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. Chap. XIII. preferment in the Church and public schools, and from them select all your public examiners. Wliat must be the result ? The immediate abandonment of three fourths of the sciences now taught, while those retained will belong of necessity to the less progressive branches of human knowledge. Under conditions so singular as those now imposed on Ox- ford and Cambridge, I am ready to join their warmest eulogists, and to contend that their plan of education is the best. In the treatise on the universities, before alluded to, there are hints thrown out on the " ignoble influence of compulsory examinations, which act on the fears rather than on the hopes of young men," and which have "drawn off many students from professorial lectures ; " on " examiners not habitually pursuing particular studies, and whose knowledge, therefore, has no fulness, richness, depth, or variety;" also on private tutors having no ostensible and responsible situation in the university, and the tendency of modern changes to throw the whole academical education into their hands and those of the public examiners (ibid. ch. ii.) ; which may lead us to infer that the optimism of the Master of Trinity is not of that un- compromising kind which should make us despair of his co-operation in all future academical reforms. In considering the present state of feeling towards Chap. XIII. ITS UTILITARIAN TENDENCY. 309 science and its cultivators in England, I cannot re- frain from citing a passage (with the leave of both the correspondents) from a letter dated February, 1845, addressed by Professor Licbig to Mr. Faraday : — " What struck me most in England was the per- ception that only those works that have a practical tendency awake attention, and command respect, while the purely scientific, which possess far greater merit, are almost unkno ,vn. And yet the latter are the proper and true source from which the others flow. Practice alone can never lead to the discovery of a truth or a principle. In Germany, it is quite the ''ontrary. Here, in the eyes of scientific men, n i *ae, or at least but a trifling one, is placed on the practical results. The enrichment of science is alone considered worthy of attention. I do not mean to say that this is better; for both nations the golden medium would certainly be a real good fortune." What I have said of the method and course of instruction now pursued in our principal universities will, I think, explain in no small degree the prevalence of the utilitarian spirit, so correctly pointed out by this distinguished foreigner, and the want of a due appreciation of the higher and more difificult depart- ments of philosophical research. From what source is the public at large, whether belonging to the upper or m m ' f^ i ■ , '^ ty 310 PATRONAGE OF SCIENCE. Chap. XIII. middle classes, to imbibe a respect and veneration for those who are engrossed in the pursuit of philosophical truth, and who live excluded from active life, if they who direct university education do not foster, nay, if they positively discourage, the teaching of the pro- gressive sciences? How can the multitude learn, that, for one mind willing or capable of patiently workinj;^- out and discovering a new truth or principle, there are hundreds who can apply to practice these principles, when once ascertained ? Nothing can be more short-sighted, therefore, even on purely utili- tarian grounds, than the usual policy of the herd of cui bono philosophers, who award higher honours and emoluments to the application than to the discovery of scientific principles. It is truly fortunate that, in proportion as Oxford and Cambridge have withdrawn their countenance more and more from studies connected with physical science and natural history, the wants of a high state of civilisation, and the spirit of the age, have afforded to them in England an annually increasing patronage. It is felt that astronomy is indispensable to navigation, chemistry to agriculture and various arts, geology to mining, botany to medicine, and so of other depart- ments. If the practical connection of any branch of science be not obvious, as in the case of zoology, scarcely any encouragement is given to it in any ft. Chap. XIII. ACADEMICAL REFORM. 311 English place of education ; but even here, fortunately, the British Museum and the College of Surgeons, by their extensive collections, step in, and in some degree supply the deficiency. After the rejection at Oxford of the moderate measure of reform proposed in 1839, for combining together the professorial and tutorial systems, we can scarcely hope that any movement from within will effect [the changes so loudly called for. Time will, year after year, remove the older members of Con- vocation, who are favourable to more enlarged views, and will replace them, it must be feared, by the avowed partizana of the narrower system of study, adopted in more modern times, and under which they have been brought up. Appeal under such circumstances must therefore be made to an external authority. A royal commission like those which have moi'e than once visited of late years the universities of Scotland, might prove a sufficient coun- terpoise to the power and vis inertixB of forty learned corporations. They might suggest such remedies as tlie licensing of new Halls, the removal of tests on ma- triculation, the awarding of honorary distinctions for proficiency in the subjects of the professorial lectures, and many others, which would doubtless be welcomed by the more enlightened members of Convocation. Fortunately, no violent innovations are called for, no i 1' I . -9 M-.^' -ri it,i 312 ACADEMICAL REFORM. CnA.P. xiir. new endowments, or grants of money. The com- missioners would have to recommend the renovation of what has fallen into disuse — the improvement of the old rather than the introduction of new and experimental systems ; they would have to give force to existing academical statutes, now inoperative, rather than to enact new laws. They might under- take university reform in the temper recommended by Dr. Whewell (p. 138.), " bringing to the task a spirit, not of hatred, but of reverence for the past, not of contempt,, but of gratitude towards our pre- decessors." No new fountains of knowledge are to be sought for in the depths of the earth ; they are already at the surface, ready, on the removal of im- pediments, to overflow and fertilize the soil. When Lord Hastings conquered Delhi in 1817, he found an extensive wilderness near that city, sterile, and parched up by the sun's heat, which had once been cultivated and populous ; for in ancient times it had been irrigated by canals which brought the waters of the Jumna from a distance of 250 miles. The empire which had left these monuments of its ancient grandeur had long passed away, and having fallen to pieces, ^ad formed a multitude of smaller kingdoms, each governed by feebler rulers. In a few years, by the aid of several thousand labourers, directed by skilful engineers, these ancient watercourses were Chap. XII L ey. The com- thc renovation improvement of n of new and ve to give force 'W inoperative, y might uncler- : recommencled to the task a e for the past, )wards our pre- jwledge are to arth ; they are removal of im- le soih When 1817, he found ty, sterile, and had once been it times it had t the waters of ' miles. The s of its ancient iving fallen to Her kingdoms, a few years, rs, directed by rcourses were Chap. XIII. EXCLUSIVE SYSTEM. 313 repaired. They had been dry for two centuries and a half; and on the day appointed for the copious streams to flow once more through the streets of the ancient metropolis, the Hindoo priests went forth in solemn procession, while troops of virgins threw garlands of flowers into the waters as they advanced. It was a day of national jubilee and thanksgiving, for the hand of a foreign power had restored to them the works of their forefathers. But our ancient seats of learning, it will be said, so far from being depopulated, are full to overflowing. Oxford annually refuses to admit new students, be- cause more cannot be accommodated within the college walls. Doubtless, the colleges are full, but can this be said of the university ? Have Oxford and Cambridge kept pace, since the commencement of the present cen- tury, with the growth of the population, wealth, and desire of education, in the British empire ? So many millions have been added to our population, that the clergy have, of necessity, increased in number, and the English bishops have more generally required aca- demical degrees before ordination. This alone has caused a considerable augmentation of students. But is it not notorious that the expensive style of living, and the exclusion of branches of instruction connected with the future professions and individual tastes of students, have kept down the number of academicians ? VOL. I. p ,:S II r f ' f. <> I m iff ! i i ( 1 I « 1? .!1| .1 ! 1. i f r| i 314 EXCLUSIVE ACADEMICAL Chap. XIII. The sons of the aristocracy, and future divines, who, if poor, may eke out their academical income with scholarships and other endowments, constitute the mass of the undergraduates. The colleges have no desire to multiply the number of their pupils ; they have ah'eady as many as they can teach. The academical fees, and the cost of board and lodging, are very reasonable ; but the style of living is so high, that students with small incomes feel themselves in a false position ; and this objection has operated far more than religious tests to check the natural in- crease of the universities. Why, it may be asked, should we crowd all the British youth into two ancient seats of learning? Why not promote the growth of other institutions in London, Durham, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland? That such competition should be encouraged, I fully admit ; but it will still be desirable that Oxford and Cambridge should expand freely, and that they should cease to serve as models of an exclusive and sectarian principle. Before the Reformation their spirit was catholic and national : since that period, they have dwindled, not into theological seminaries, for they have never in practice afforded a complete pro- fessional course for divinity students, but into places for educating the clergy of the Established Church, and the aristocratic portion of the laity professing the I. Chap. XIII. re divines, who, 5al income with constitute the colleges have no eir pupils ; they n teach. The 'd and lodging, iving is so high, A themselves in las operated far the natural in- i crowd all the ;s of learning? :her institutions 8, and Ireland? Duraged, I fully hat Oxford and and that they 1 exclusive and Formation their Lce that period, ical seminaries, a complete pro- but into places )lished Church, y professing the Chap. XIII. SYSTEM OF ENGLAND. 315 same form of Christianity. Such a system, coupled with the abandonment of professional studies in ge- neral, tends to dissever throughout the country men of different callings, creeds, and professions. It has a dissociating influence. It separates during the period of youth the nobility and gentry from the higher por- tion of the middle classes, the barrister from the attorney, the physician from the surgeon, the legis- lators and lawyers of England from those civilians to whom the government of eighty millions in India is to be consigned, the members of the Anglican church from the Romanists of Stonyhurst or the Dissenters of Hackney, the civil engineers of Putney from the medical students of London. It disunites these and other sections of the same community, and throws them into antagonist masses, each keeping aloof from the other in cold and jealous seclusion, each cherishing sectarian or party animosities, or professional and social prejudices. Complaints are often heard, and not without reason, of the harsh outlines that often separate the different grades of society in this country. It is in the season of youth, and when men are engaged in the common pursuit of knowledge, — especially if allowed as far as possible to follow the bent of their own tastes and genius, — that friendships might easily be formed tending to soften these hard outlines. At college, they would be 'ii * .'.ii" 316 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. Chap. XIII brought together on neutral, and usually on friendly ground, where kindly feelings and sympathies woul(| spring up spontaneously, and would be cherished ini after-life by congenial souls, however distant the sta- tion, or distinct the religious opinions or professional employments of the former fellow-students.* ♦ While these sheets were passing through the press, an im portant discussion look phiee in the House of Commons, in con-! sequence of a motion made April 10th, 1845, by Mr. Christie,! M. P. for AVeymouth, for a royal commission of enquiry intoj the state of education in the English universities. I have added and altered nothing since reading this debate, and it will be seen that while there is a coincidence in some of ray views with those so ably advocated by many of the parlia- mentary speakers, there are other grounds taken up by me to which they have not alluded. \ V\: . .•. I . I ■A It END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. London : Printed by A. Spottiswoode, New- Street- Square. MAY 2 5 195f niiHJOV 'j u 'i V. Cadeton CbHege ««■ ■i#i »« , and members to be liable for Books injur ^stody. •Works of a controversial or deeply theological charar in abstruse sciences, and mere novels, to be excluded. —Books to be sent, f^« " )g them. angi ;d in ^ .— -( ■e, db 31 •11 a Lyell, C. Travels in North America CARLETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY