that Canada and the St. Lawrence can give them such a way.
The greatest difficulty in teaching these people that their best way to the sea lies through Virginia, not through Canada, is to get our people to raise funds for the gratuitous circulation of the Reports[1] in sufficient numbers between this and the next meeting of Congress in December. If we can do that, the North-West States will raise their voices in favour of the Virginia route, and demand the money to o])en it. When that is done, they will not want Canada, and we shall have peace. Thus you see, my friend, I am aiming high and striking far. But with a few heads such as yours to help, we would hit the mark as sure as a gun 1
Yours, M.
P.S. In reading over this, it smacks of the "ego," that I, a professor without a Chair, and upon a salary not so good as three hundred of your yellow boys, should be talking about bringing influences into play to prevent war between two great nations! But "tall oaks from little acorns grow."
I wish you would make me that visit you promised me now that I have a nest of my own. The house is never too full but what we can always find a place for you. If the worst comes to the worst, we can rig up a pole out of the window (Tennessee fashion) on which you can roost.
Early in 1870, Maury was busy with a map which should serve as a "caste of the atmosphere"—a device which his friend Brooke, the inventor of the deep-sea lead, had also conceived the idea of. It is described in the following letter to Rutson Maury:—
To Rutson Maury.
Jan. 1870.
. . . . You remember, before the war, how hard I tried to get up a Telegraphic Meteorological Bureau—writing and lecturing about it—now as meteorology for the farmers,
- ↑ Maury's preliminary Report on the Resources of Virginia.
