and Gulf coasts; systematic observations of the rise and fall of the water in the Mississippi River and its tributaries, with gauges at all the principal towns; the redemption of the "drowned lands" of the Mississippi; navigation by great-circle routes; a ship-canal and railroad across the Isthmus, which he insisted should be by way of Panama or Nicaragua rather than Tehuantepec; the establishment of a great port at Norfolk, Va.; and the colonization of the surplus black and other population of the South in the valley of the Amazon. The Darien expedition of Lieutenant Strain and Lieutenant Herndon's exploration of the Amazon were connected with two of these schemes. The "lane route," followed by some of the transatlantic steamship lines, originated in the publication by Maury, in 1855, of a chart on which two lanes were laid down, each twenty-five miles broad, by following which the danger of collisions might be reduced. In acknowledgment of the value of the service rendered by this plan, and by the wind and current charts and sailing directions, the merchants and underwriters of New York presented him with five thousand dollars in gold and a handsome service of silver.
When the Ordinance of Secession was passed by the Legislature of Virginia, Commander Maury believed that his paramount obligation was to his native State. He accordingly left the service of the United States and identified his fortunes with those of Virginia and the Confederacy. There can be no doubt of his disinterestedness in taking this course. His merits and the value of his services were generally recognized throughout the North, and he had but recently given courses of lectures in the principal towns and cities, which were a series of popular ovations to him. In going into the service of the Confederacy he put himself under the direction, as his immediate superiors, of two men who, as United States Senators, had been prominent in opposition to his reinstatement after he had been put upon the retired list, and who are said to have been hostile to him before the war and through it. Of the manner of his leaving the service of the United States, he said, May 12, 1861, in a letter to a friend in Newburg, N. Y.: "I only saw last night the remarks of the Boston Traveller about Lieutenant Maury's treachery, his desertion, removal of buoys. It's all a lie! I resigned and left the observatory on Saturday the 12th ult. I worked as hard and as faithfully for 'Uncle Sam' up to three o'clock of that day as I ever did, and at three o'clock I turned everything—all the public property and records of the office—regularly over to Lieutenant Whiting, the proper officer in charge. I left in press Nautical Monograph, No. 3, one of the most valuable contributions I ever made to navigation; and, just as I left it, it is now in course of publication there, though I shall
