Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/363

Rh the cholera epidemic of 1886-'7 he was founder and president of the Red Cross society. He is still a member of congress, where he is well known as a parliamentary orator. He has written &ldquo;Páginas de viage&rdquo; (Santiago, 1871); &ldquo;Poesías líricas&rdquo; (3 vols., 1872); &ldquo;Romances Americanos&rdquo; (2 vols., 1874); &ldquo;Manuel Rodriguez,&rdquo; a historic drama in verse (1874); &ldquo;El Proscripto&rdquo; (1875); and &ldquo;Diego Portales&rdquo; (1877).

WALK-IN-THE-WATER, or MY-EE-RAH, Indian chief, d. about 1817. He was a Huron of the Wyandot tribe, and at the beginning of the war of 1812 offered his services to Gen. William Hull; but they were declined, owing to the unwillingness of that officer to employ savages. He was afterward forced by circumstances to join the British at Malden, but he was instrumental in persuading several tribes to remain neutral, and in a council at that place he vindicated his course in a speech that was called by his enemies &ldquo;American talk.&rdquo; After this Walk-in-the-Water and his associates, openly breaking with Tecumseh and the Prophet, declined to remain with the British, and deserted from Gen. Henry Proctor at Chatham, Canada. At the battle of the Thames he offered his services, with those of sixty warriors, conditionally, to Gen. William Henry Harrison, who declined them, and the Indians returned to Detroit river.

WALL, Garret Dorset, senator, b. in Middle- town, Monmouth co., N. J., 10 March, 1783 ; d. in Burlington, N. J., 22 Nov., 1850. He received an academical education, studied law at Trenton, and was licensed in 1804 as an attorney, and in 1807 as a counsellor at law. At one time during the war of 1812 he commanded a volunteer company from Trenton at Sandy Hook. He was clerk of the state supreme court in 1812-'17, and quartermaster- general of New Jersey in 1815-'37. In 1827 he was chosen to the legislature and in 1829 he was elected governor, but declined the office to ac- cept that of IT. S. district attorney. From 1835 till 1841 he sat in the U. S. senate, and from 1849 till his death he was a judge of the court of errors arfd appeals. — His son James Walter, senator, b. in Trenton, N. J., 26 May, 1820 ; d. in Elizabeth, N. J., 9 June, 1872, was graduated at Princeton in 1838, studied law with Daniel Haines; was ad- mitted to the bar in 1841, and began to prac- tise in his native place, holding the office of commissioner in bankruptcy. He removed to Bur- lington, N. J., in 1847, and devoted himself to literary pursuits, becoming mayor of the city in 1854. During the early part of the civil war he -attacked the administration for interfering with the liberty of the press, writing a severe letter to Montgomery Blair, and he was imprisoned for sev- eral weeks in Fort Lafayette. It is said that he offered to furnish 20,000 Belgian rifles to the so- called " Knights of the Golden Circle " for use against the U. S. government. He was chosen to the U. S. senate in 1863 to fill the unexpired term of John R. Thomson, deceased, and served from 21 Jan. till 3 March of that year. In 1869 he re- moved to Elizabeth. Mr. Wall's publications in- clude "Foreign Etchings" (Burlington, 1856); "Es- •says on the Early English Poets." which appeared in the " Knickerbocker Magazine " ; and various essays and addresses.

WALLACE, Alfred Russel, English natural- ist, b. in Usk, Monmouth, 8 Jan., 1822. He re- ceived his education at the grammar-school of Hertford, was for some time a land-surveyor, and assistant to his elder brother, an architect, engag- ing afterward in the study of natural sciences. In 1848 he visited South America, explored the basin of Amazon and Rio Negro rivers, and re- sided for several months in Para. He formed ex- tensive collections in ornithology and botany, and, through a long sojourn among "the Indians of the Upper Amazon, obtained valuable information concerning their dialects, habits, and manners. Most of those collections were lost at sea when he returned to England in 1852. From 1854 till 1862 he visited the Malay archipelago, studied the flora and fauna of Molucca, Celebes, and New Guinea, and arrived, independently of Charles R. Darwin's researches, at a theory of natural selection, which he developed in a paper that he sent to Sir Charles Lyell entitled " On the Tendencies of Varieties to depart Indefinitely from the Original Type " (Lon- don, 1858). Besides works on his eastern travels and the theory of natural selection, Wallace is the author of " Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with Remarks on the Vocabularies of the Amazo- nian Languages " (London, 1853) ; " Palm-Trees of the Amazon and their Uses " (1853) ; " On the Geo- graphical Distribution of Animals," which was is- sued simultaneously in English, French, and Ger- man (2 vols., 1876); "Island Life" (1880); and " Land Nationalization " (1882).

WALLACE, David, congressman, b. in Lancas- ter county, Pa., 4 April, 1799 ; d. in Indianapolis, Ind., 3 Sept., 1859. He removed with his father's family to Brookville, Ind., in 1817, was gradu- ated at the U. S. military academy in 1821, and was assistant professor of mathematics there for two years, but resigned from the army, studied law, and established a lucrative practice in Franklin county, Ind. He served several terms in the legis- lature, was a member of the Constitutional con- vention, lieutenant-governor in 1831-'4, and gov- ernor in 1837-'40. During that service he was active as an advocate of internal improvements and in establishing a school system. He was cho- sen to congress as a Whig in 1840, served one term, and, as a member of the committee on commerce, gave the casting-vote in favor of an appropriation to develop Samuel F. B. Morse's magnetic tele- graph, which vote cost him his re-election. He re- turned to practice in 1842, and from 1856 until his death was judge of the Marion county court of common pleas. He was a popular political speak- er and a laborious and impartial jurist. — His son, Lewis, soldier, b. in Brookville, Franklin co., Ind., 10 April, 1827, received a common-school educa- tion, and at the beginning of the Mexican war was a law-student in Indiana. At the call for volunteers he entered the army as a 1st lieu- tenant in compa- ny H, 1st Indiana infantry. He re- sumed his profes- sion in 1848, which he practised in Covington andsub- sequently in Craw- fordsville, Ind., and served four years in the state senate. At the be- ginning of the civil war he was appointed adjutant-general of Indiana, soon afterward becoming colonel of the 11th Indiana volunteers, with which he served in West Vir- ginia, participating in the capture of Romney and