Page:Matthew Fontaine Maury 1806-1873.pdf/13

. While physically disabled, "his active and comprehensive mind" planned reforms and other improvements of general interest which were soon embodied in treatises and published incognito in the Southern Literary Messenger under the title, "Scraps from the Lucky Bag." Their publication brought him an ever-increasing world audience and the adoption of many of his suggestions contributed largely to the development of the country.

Notable among these suggestions were the establishment of a Naval Academy at Annapolis, where the young midshipmen might learn the higher duties of their profession; the building of a dock and navy yard at Memphis, with a school of instruction for naval engineers, that they might learn the use and control of steam, then coming into use; the development of a ship canal connecting the Illinois River and Lake Michigan, and the erection of forts along the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.

When it became known that Maury was the author of these papers, his ability was generally acknowledged and his position as an authority on naval affairs was established; as a result, on the recommendation of brother officers, he was placed in charge of the Depot of Charts and Instruments, which, under his direction, was developed into the National Observatory and Hydrographic Department of the Government.

At this time Maury was thirty-seven years old and had been seventeen years in the naval service. He now labored assiduously to obtain information as to the winds and currents, by distributing to captains of vessels specially prepared log books, and in the cause of nine years he had collected a sufficient number of logs to make two hundred manuscript volumes each with twenty-five hundred days' observations. One result was to show the necessity of combined action on the part of maritime nations, in regard to ocean meteorology. This led to an international benefit to navigation, as well as, indirectly, to meteorology. Maury attempted to organize co-operative meteorological work on land, but the Government did not, at that time, take any steps in this direction. His oceanographical work, however, received recognition in all parts of the civilized world.

Of his meteorological work on land, with prophetic vision Maury said, [wrote to a kinsman] "Take notice now, this plan of crop and weather