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Rh you see in the papers. But if war come, sure enough with all its horrors—as I fear it will, and that right soon—I suppose that its seat will be not far from this place.

I have no idea of what Va. will do. If "the Convention" pass a secession ordinance, it does not follow that the people will ratify it; but there is no such thing as speaking with confidence about the matter—we must wait and see, when the people have recovered from the stirring events of the last few days.

. . . . I am trying to get up an expedition to the South Pole, and getting nautical monograph No. 3 ready for the press.

My love to dear Maria and all the ladies.

Yours, M.

It is not within the province of this biography to discuss at length the merits of the questions then at issue But to understand the motives which influenced Maury's course, and to make them clear—particularly to such of our readers as may not be residents of the United States—it will be necessary to give a brief glance at the history of the country before the war of 1776, in which we separated ourselves from England. The thirteen colonies covering our Atlantic front were dependent upon the mother country alone. Each colony was ruled by a governor appointed by the Crown, together with a representative body, after the fashion of a parliament, of rather ill-defined local powers. So far as their political relations were concerned, these infant States were absolutely independent of each other, though bound together by ties of kindred, neighbourhood, and preservation from the dangers which threatened them—dangers from the Indian, and dangers from the French, who were enclosing them by a cordon of forts along their whole western frontier, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, to make good their claim to the great valley of the Mississippi.