LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1811
September 6, Friday: James Melville Gilliss was born at Georgetown.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 6 of 9 Mo// This evening we called on our old neighbors Sam Gibbs & Mary Billings with whom we lived together in one house about 4 & an half years in pretty good friendship. They looked old fashioned, & my mind was turn’d to reflect on the days that we spent under their roof with much feeling — We had some trials, but we had also as much pleasure & enjoyed ourselves, with as much innocency as falls to the lot of common people —There we commenced house keepers, there we were blessed with as fine a little son as need be, & while living there we were deprived of him. The rememberance of his sweet & innocent engaging little ways, still affects me with Sensations which are trying to human nature, altho it is more than a year ago since he left us for a better parent, & is now no doubt a little Angel in heven, & what if I say, singing praises to the most high before his throne. — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Lt. James Melville Gilliss “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1827
At the age of 15, James Melville Gilliss joined the US Navy as a midshipman. He would serve on the Delaware, the Java and the Concord.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1830
December 6, Monday: By the order of Secretary of the Navy John Branch, what eventually would become the US Naval Observatory began as a straightforward Depot of Charts and Instruments with an annual budget of $330, under the direction of Lieutenant Louis M. Goldsborough. Its function was merely the restoration, repair, and rating of navigational instruments.
Charles Wilkes, put to work at the new Depot, would begin to build a rudimentary astronomical observatory which would become, in 1842 with an appropriation of $25,000, the National Observatory, forerunner of the US Naval Observatory. During the early 1800s American sealing and whaling ships had been harvesting huge
rewards. Demand was insatiable for furs, whale bone, lamp oil, and ambergris as a base for perfumes. Unfortunately, the hunting grounds off Chile and Peru were quickly diminishing and by the 1820s the New England sailors had been forced farther and farther to the south in search of their reward. Penetration into the icy seas had created diverse problems for the sailors as the captains were reluctant to share information as to the location of their new hunting grounds. Ships would suddenly find themselves in danger of running against unreported and uncharged islets and submerged reefs. A number of vessels foundered or were wrecked. Demands came that the US Government sponsor exploring expeditions to the Antarctic to make all this information public knowledge for the good of commerce. There was a private expedition led by Benjamin Pendleton and Nathaniel Palmer from 1829 to 1831 — but the reports of this expedition had not met the need.
Lt. James Melville Gilliss would take charge of the project at the National Observatory, which would be completed in 1844.
The US federal Congress convened for its 2d session.
A package containing an expensive score of Olimpie arrived at the Paris home of Hector Berlioz. The score was signed “your affectionate Spontini” by the composer.
An interim administration was set up in Poland under Adam Jerzy, Prince Czartoryski.
The 1st astronomical observatory in the United States was set up by the Navy in Washington.
Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Report of the Secretary of the Navy.” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session I. Number 2, pages 42-3; AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
NAVAL AFFAIRS, III. No. 429 E. “Documents communicated to Congress by the President at the opening of the Second Session of the Twenty-first Congress, accompanying the Report of the Secretary of the Navy: Paper E. Statement of expenditures, etc., for the removal of Africans to Liberia.” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session I. Number 2, pages 211-8.
The 2nd session of the 21st US Congress convened. John Randolph wrote from London, ill, on his way back from Russia: “... Congress and the Virginia Assembly both meet this day, and I pray God to send us, the people, a safe deliverance. It will be very unlucky in case of a general war in Europe, which some look forward to, that we shall have eaten all our wheat, for I learn that there is a total destruction of Indian corn.... A great discovery has been made on the Continent, far surpassing any of Archimedes or Newton. The people have discovered the secret of their strength; and the military have found out that they are the people. Commend me earnestly to all my old friends... I shall be among them (dead or alive) next Summer. I have provided for a leaden coffin, HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
feeling as I do an inexpressible desire to lie by the side of my dear mother and honored father at old Matoax.”
President Andrew Jackson’s Message to 2d session, 21st Congress, arguing the right to use the veto at will:
The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern states were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to a land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual.
We may note that Jackson was proposing that the American folk do more for Cherokees than Adolf Hitler was willing to do for Jews. –Because the Nazi Party’s uniformed Schutzstaffel confiscated Jewish assets and used the resulting funds to purchase excursion-rate railroad tickets for them to Auschwitz, Poland (true fact). Whereas we generous Americans sent the Cherokees off to a concentration camp called Oklahoma, paying their tickets with federal tax money at no charge whatever to them for their excursion-rate tickets –even at a point in history before there were any railroad boxcars into which we could shut them without food or water– with a gratis escort service of US Cavalry to protect them and care for them on their journey. HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1831
Midshipman James Melville Gilliss started his studies at the University of Virginia.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1832
Midshipman James Melville Gilliss went to Paris to study.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1836
Midshipman James Melville Gilliss obtained a position as an assistant at the Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington DC (he would be made responsible for astronomical observations).
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Lt. James Melville Gilliss “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1837
Midshipman James Melville Gilliss went under Captain Charles Wilkes with the United States South-Sea Exploring Expedition, to cruise the South Pacific and Antarctic region for five years while making observations on differences of longitude by means of moon-culminations (he would make metrological observations and work on new instruments). Franklin Pierce and other friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne attempted to obtain an appointment for him as historian of this expedition, known informally as the “Ex. Ex.”
It would only be a political accident, that the expedition, which would be derogated by Thoreau in WALDEN as “that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense,” would not avail itself of the services of Hawthorne.
WALDEN: What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring PEOPLE OF Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in WALDEN the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.
CHARLES WILKES HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Lt. James Melville Gilliss “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1838
Midshipman James Melville Gilliss became a Lieutenant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1855
Matthew Fontaine Maury’s SAILING DIRECTIONS.
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. BY M.F. MAURY, LL.D., LIEUT. U.S. NAVY, SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED AND IMPROVED (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 329 & 331 Pearl Street, Franklin Square) — Henry Thoreau would obtain this volume from the Concord Town Library in about 1856, and make notes in his Fact Book. MAURY’S SEA GEOGRAPHY
Lt. Maury’s team at the US Naval Observatory included Lt. James Melville Gilliss, Lt. John Mercer Brooke, Lt. William Lewis Herndon, Lt. Isaac Strain, Lt. Lardner Gibbon, John Herndon Maury of the Darien Gap expedition, and others — but duty at the Observatory was always temporary, and over and over new men would need to be trained.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Lt. James Melville Gilliss “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
Thomas Ewbank’s THE WORLD A WORKSHOP, OR THE PHYSICAL RELATION OF MAN TO THE EARTH.
The 1st US Naval Scientific Expedition had been that of Charles Wilkes to the Pacific Ocean and the 2d that of William Francis Lynch to Palestine. The 3d such expedition had been that of Lt. James Melville Gilliss to South America. It had traveled overland to Panama City and then via the South Pacific to Callao, Valparaiso, and Santiago. It had included a subsidiary expedition that explored northern Chile as far as La Paz, Bolivia. During this year it resulted in publication of THE U.S. NAVAL ASTRONOMICAL EXPEDITION TO THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE DURING THE YEARS 1849-’50-’51-’52. The 1st volume covered the geography, resources, history, and political situation of Chile and included a narrative of the overland travels. There was a folding panoramic view of the city of Santiago from the summit of Santa Lucia.
The 2d volume contained reports on natural history subjects plus a narrative of Archibald MacRae’s journey across the Andes and the pampas of the Argentine Provinces. John Cassin’s report on birds contained colored bird plates. Spencer Fullerton Baird submitted reports on general zoology, botany, and paleontology.1 Vo l u m e s 1 and 2 would be in the library of Waldo Emerson and would be accessed by Henry Thoreau in about 1858. He would copy details about the natural resources of Chile by Lt. Gilliss, and about South American Indian remains by Thomas Ewbank, into his Indian Notebook #10 and his Fact Book. US NAVAL ASTRO. EXPED., I US NAVAL ASTRO. EXPED., II
1. The 3d volume contained tables of astronomic observations, made at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Santiago, Chile. Volumes 4 and 5 never got published. The 6th volume contained astronomic observations and experiments made in Chile and at other observatories. HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1858
September 7, Tuesday: A total eclipse of the sun was viewable across South America.2
Samuel Storrow Higginson brought some eggs from Deerfield to show Henry Thoreau “among others apparently that of the Virginia rail”:
September 7: P.M. – To Assabet Bath. I turn Anthony’s corner. It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun; the earth-song of the cricket comes up through all; and ever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard. (Poultry is now fattening on grasshoppers.) The dry deserted fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side on Nature’s palette. You literally wade in yellow flowers knee-deep, and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescanti. [Channing, pages 104, 105.] J. Farmer calls those Rubus sempervirens berries, now abundant, “snake blackberries.” Looking for my Maryland yellow-throat’s nest, I find that apparently a snake has made it the portico to his dwelling, there being a hole descending into the earth through it! In Shad-bush Meadow the prevailing grasses (not sedges) now are the slender Panicum clandestinum, whose seeds are generally dropped now, Panicum virgatum, in large tufts, and blue-joint, the last, of course, long since done. These are all the grasses that I notice there. What a contrast to sink your head so as to cover your ears with water, and hear only the confused noise of the rushing river, and then to raise your ears above water and hear the steady creaking of crickets in the aerial universe! While dressing, I see two small hawks, probably partridge hawks, soaring and circling about one hundred feet above the river. Suddenly one drops down from that height almost perfectly perpendicularly after some prey, till it is lost behind the bushes. Near the little bridge at the foot of Turtle Bank, Eragrostis capillaris in small but dense patches, apparently in prime (the Poa capillaris of Bigelow). What I have thus called in press is E. pectinacea (P. hirsuta of Bigelow). On the flat hill south of Abel Hosmer, Agrostis scabra, hair grass, flyaway grass, tickle grass, out of bloom; branches purplish. That of September 5th was the A. perennans, in lower ground. On the railroad between tracks above Red House, Aristida dichotoma, half a dozen inches high, hardly yet out; 2. This was part of the well understood “Saros cycle 142” which repeats itself, for a series of 72 eclipse events, every 18 years plus 11 days and began with the partial solar eclipse of April 17, 1624. This cycle of 72 regular eclipse events will provide total eclipses somewhere on the face of the earth from July 25, 1786 through October 29, 2543. The longest duration of totality during this regular 72-occurrence series will come on May 28, 2291, when the totality will persist for 6 minutes and 34 seconds. The 72d and final event in the series will be a partial eclipse that will occur, God willing, on June 5, 2904. Lt. James Melville Gilliss of the US Naval Observatory would prepare, in 1859, AN ACCOUNT OF THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN ON SEPTEMBER 7, 1858 (Washington DC). HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
forked aristida, or poverty grass.
Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, – among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., according to Wilson, and is like (except, perhaps, in form) to one which E. Bartlett brought me a week or ten days ago, which dropped from a load of hay carried to Stow’s barn! So perhaps it breeds here.3 Also a smaller egg of same form, but dull white with very pale dusky spots, which may be that of the Carolina rail. He had also what I think the egg of the Falco fuscatus,4 it agreeing with MacGillivray’s sparrow hawk’s egg.5
3. Yes. Vide September 9th. Vide September 21st and December 7th, and June 1st, 1859. Vide 18th. 4. [Question by Austin Meredith: Does anyone have any idea what this Falco fuscatus might be?] 5. William MacGillivray. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GREAT BRITAIN (Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1836). RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GB [This volume found in Thoreau’s personal library is now in Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library.] HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1861
As civil war broke out and Brooklyn’s attention was drawn to the conflict, the Brooklyn Eagle of course began making money hand over fist. There was a Grand Jury inquiry to determine whether several presses including it were guilty of disloyalty, and of encouraging the enemy by urging the North to give in to the demands of the Southrons. The Eagle of course argued indignantly on behalf of its freedoms of speech and of the press. Although it would not be indicted, the US postmaster general would order the New-York postmaster not to accept any more of its newspapers for mailing (from this year until 1884 Thomas Kinsella would be the tenured editor at this newspaper).
Matthew Fontaine Maury, a native of Virginia, handed in his federal commission in order to serve his native state as Chief of Sea Coast, River and Harbor Defences. When Maury resigned, Lt. James Melville Gilliss came to be in charge at the US Naval Observatory (he had previously been responsible merely for obtaining the observatory’s instruments and books).
Benjamin Apthorp Gould got married with Mary Apthorp Quincy, daughter of the Reverend Josiah Quincy. He undertook the task of preparing for publication the records of astronomical observations made at the US Naval Observatory since 1850. ASTRONOMY
Maury would be sent by the Confederacy to England, Ireland, and France to purchase ships while conducting a propaganda campaign for the South and for peace. He would try desperately through speeches and newspaper articles to get foreign nations to intercede in our fratricidal conflict. Having had experience with the transatlantic cable and electricity flowing through wires underwater while working with Cyrus West Field and Samuel Finley Breese Morse, he put that experience to use by developing an electric “torpedo” (similar to a present-day contact mine) — the Secretary of the Navy would in 1865 acknowledge that his device had “cost the Union more vessels than all other causes combined.” After the surrender, Maury would serve Maximilian in Mexico as “Imperial Commissioner of Immigration” and build the Carlotta and New Virginia Colony for displaced Confederates and immigrants from other lands. He would then accept a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Kentucky, holding the chair of physics, and write on THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF VIRGINIA. HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
1865
February 9, Thursday: James Melville Gilliss died in Washington DC.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: November 3, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with