PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:
CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1798
April 3, Tuesday: Charles Wilkes was born in New-York, son of John de Ponthieu and Mary Seton Wilkes.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1815
Charles Wilkes entered the merchant service.
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.
Charles Wilkes studied under the founder of the U.S. Coast Survey, Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler.
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1818
January 1, Thursday: Forces of the Peshwa were defeated by British at Koregaon.
The Black Ball Lines began regular packet service between Britain and the United States as the Courier departed from Liverpool for New-York.
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “Voted that the Town Treasurer hire 10,500 dollars to purchase a farm for the paupers.”
The visitors to the President’s home in Washington DC, which had recently been refurbished and painted a glowing white after being burned by the British army in 1814, were referring to it as Washington’s “white house” (since back on the plantation in Virginia, where the President resided for the remainder of the year with his slaves, the main plantation house was also known as the White House).
Charles Wilkes received an appointment as a midshipman in the US Navy.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 1 of 1st M 1818 / I have been thankful in beginning the New Year under a precious sense of favor, but have to regret the loss of Meeting. I was in expectation of going but had a little buisness to attend to which I could not avoid & it took about 20 minutes more than the time & being unwilling to go in late & set the example concluded it was best not to go - My H attended & said Hannah Dennis preached - Our cousins George Gould & Lydia his wife set the Afternoon with us & took tea. - This was a pleasant visit, there is something pleasant & comfortable in brethren’s dwelling in harmony HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Rec'd a Letter from Uncle Stanton1
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
1. Stephen Wanton Gould Diary, 1815-1823: The Gould family papers are stored under control number 2033 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library, Box 7 Folder 12 for August 24, 1815-September 25, 1823; also on microfilm, see Series 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1826
April 16, Sunday: Charles Wilkes got married with Jane Jeffrey Renwick.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 16th of 4th M / D Buffum again at Meeting but set in silence tho’ Father Rodman had a short testimony in the morning & in the Afternoon J Dennis also in the Afternoon had a few words -5th day 20th of 4th M / Silent Meeting & in my mind some arisings of life for which I was in degree thankful & glad — In the last (Preparative) The Queries were all Answerd, it being the Preparative Meeting before the Quarter, preceding the Yearly Meeting. - to some of the Answers, I thought some pertinent & seasonable observations were made. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
April 28, Friday: Charles Wilkes was promoted to lieutenant in the US Navy.
Which wasn’t nearly good enough — once he was safely out onto the Pacific Ocean and beyond scrutiny, he would promote himself to captain and begin to fly a commodore’s flag. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1829
December: Returning from Mexico, where his office had been to cause the term poinsettismo to enter the Spanish language as a shorthand for “officious and intrusive,” US Minister Joel Roberts Poinsett brought north some cuttings of the Euphorbia pulcherrima, known in Mexico as La Flor de Noche Buena, the plant which would be publicized in the US as the “poinsettia,” the red bracts of which (they’re not red flowers, the flowers are the little knobs) have become a synonym in all the nations of Christendom and in all the department stores of all the cities on the planet for the holy night of Xmas Eve. Back home in our nation’s puzzle palace, Poinsett became a player in President Andrew Jackson’s deal to force Mexico to “sell” Texas to the United States. The asking price (the US asking price) for Texas was to be US$5,000,000.2
There was no living American who was more truly a citizen of the world, in the old Jeffersonian way, than Joel R. Poinsett, the Charleston friend of Petigru and William J. Grayson, the poet, who were also opposed to the sectionalism of the adored Calhoun. [In a footnote: Both Calhoun and Poinsett were pupils of Timothy Dwight in Connecticut, Poinsett at the Greenfield Hill Academy, Calhoun at Yale.] This first American minister to Mexico, whence he had brought back the Christmas flower and plant that bore his name, retained the universal mind, with the courtier’s manner and the versatile charm, of the days before cotton filled the horizon of the South. In years of travel in his youth he had visited Madam de Staël, studied at Edinburgh, lived for a while in Russia, and in 1811 President Madison had sent him to Chile and Argentina to cultivate friendly relations with these embryo republics. As one of the Americans, like Madison and Clay, for whom their country was ordained to establish an order superior to that of the old world, he encouraged the liberals in these insurgent colonies of Spain on this first of the inter-American “good will” missions. Then Poinsett, as secretary of war, furthered the exploration of the West, enabling the Charlestonian Frémont to show what he was made of, while he appointed Charles Wilkes to command the South Sea expedition and tried to secure George Catlin’s pictures for the nation. A naturalist and an antiquarian, always a patron of learning and art, he had helped Prescott in his work on the Mexican conquest, preserved examples of the Indian crafts, rescued Peruvian manuscripts and made a collection of ancient Mexican sculpture. Still later, on the Pedee river, he had experimented with grapes and rice, assembling countless specimens of trees and shrubs from all over the world in the park that surrounded his plantation-house. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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.
2. The Encyclopædia Britannica, always a good source of whitewash, alleges that “A fervent liberal, he frequently meddled in the affairs of Latin American nations and was one of the earliest U.S. citizens to be disliked for his misdirected good intentions.” Q: Why is the worst thing one can say, about a white man, that his good intentions were misdirected? A: It’s pointless to try to say anything more challenging than this, for the white people simply wouldn’t believe one, they’d assume one was being malicious. It can be known directly and indubitably, from the contents of personal consciousness, that white people are well-intentioned. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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, 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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1836
May 18, Wednesday: The report of the Pinckney Committee to the US House of Representatives, including the first gag resolution. The US Congress passed an amendment to the Naval Appropriations Bill authorizing the President to “send out a surveying and exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the South Seas,” and a total of $300,000 was appropriated for the expedition. The amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 26 to 3 while in the House there was considerable opposition but the final vote was 79 to 65. The primary purpose of the expedition was to aid commerce and navigation, but it was also supposed “to extend the bounds of science and to promote knowledge.” CHARLES WILKES
(Because the name of the expedition, United States South Seas Exploring Expedition, would soon be shortened to “Ex. Ex.,” the ship that would be sent out, the Vincennes, would also be referred to informally as the “Ex. Ex.”.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
WALDEN: I have always endeavored to acquire strict business PEOPLE OF habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with WALDEN the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time; –often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;– to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization, –taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;– charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier, –there is the untold fate of La Perouse;– universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man, – such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE GALOUP HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert had reached the doldrums of the Equator.
AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Wednesday, May 18th. Lat. 9 54N., long. 113 17W., The north-east trades had now left us, and we had the usual variable winds, which prevail near the line, together with some rain. So long as we were in these latitudes, we had but little rest in our watch on deck at night, for, as the winds were light and variable, and we could not lose a breath, we were all the watch bracing the yards, and taking in and making sail, and “humbugging” with our flying kites. A little puff of wind on the larboard quarter, and then– “larboard fore braces!” and studding-booms were rigged out, studding-sails set alow and aloft, the yards trimmed, and jibs and spanker in; when it would come as calm as a duck-pond, and the man at the wheel stand with the palm of his hand up, feeling for the wind. “Keep her off a little!” “All aback forward, sir!” cries a man from the forecastle. Down go the braces again; in come the studding-sails, all in a mess, which half an hour won’t set right; yards braced sharp up; and she’s on the starboard tack, close hauled. The studding-sails must now be cleared away, and set up in the tops, and on the booms. By the time this is done, and you are looking out for a soft plank for a nap,– “Lay aft here, and square in the head yards!” and the studding-sails are all set again on the starboard side. So it goes until it is eight bells,– call the watch,– heave the log,– relieve the wheel, and go below the larboard watch.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1838
April: The Vincennes, a sloop of war of 780 tons, was allocated as the flagship of the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition. Because of the name of the expedition, the Vincennes would be constantly referred to as the “Ex. Ex.” Other vessels were also allocated: the Peacock, a sloop of war of 650 tons, the Porpoise, a brig of 230 tons, and the store ship Relief. Two New York pilot boats, the 110-ton schooner Sea Gull and the 96-ton schooner Flying Fish were purchased for the expedition to be used as survey vessels close in to shore.
Although this expedition was to be commanded by Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones, he would walk away from the project due to illness after lengthy delays originating with the Secretary of the Navy (he would figure in MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE as “Commodore J—”). Command of the expedition would then be offered to Commodore William Branford Shubrick, but he would decline. Attempts to recruit Captain Lawrence Kearney and Captain Gregory and Captain Joseph Smith would also fail. Only then would the planners resort to Charles Wilkes, who had so little experience at sea and in addition a temperament tempted to excess. Of the 342 sailors this martinet would dismiss 62 as unsuitable when the expedition reached one or another port or encountered one or another sailing vessel, 42 would desert the expedition, and 15 would succumb to disease or injury, or drown. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
August 18, Saturday: Lieutenant Charles Wilkes sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, in command of a squadron of five vessels and a store-ship, to explore the southern seas. The main ship of this group, the Vincennes, a sloop of war of 780 tons, would be referred to as the “Ex. Ex.” because of the name of the exploring expedition. He would visit Madeira, the Cape Verd islands, Rio de Janeiro, Tierra del Fuego, Valparaíso, Callao, the Paumotou group, Tahiti, the Samoan group (which he would survey and explore), Wallis island, and Sydney in New South Wales.
During its circumnavigation of the globe, the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition would survey the Northwest coast of the North American continent. The expedition was our 1st funded and outfitted by the US federal government. Although Wilkes would be credited with discovering Antarctica in 1840, Nathaniel Palmer, a fur-seal hunter, had previously sailed far enough south, in 1820, to be entitled to some credit as well.
This expedition was something which would be duly noted in WALDEN under the rubric “that South-Sea HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense”:
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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
INTELLIGENCE: Exploring Expedition. The United States Corvette Vincennes, Captain Charles Wilkes, the flag ship of the Exploring Expedition, arrived at New York on Friday, June 10th, from a cruise of nearly four years. The Brigs Porpoise and Oregon may shortly be expected. The Expedition has executed every part of the duties confided to it by the Government. A long list of ports, harbors, islands, reefs, and shoals, named in the list, have been visited and examined or surveyed. The positions assigned on the charts to several vigias, reefs, shoals, and islands, have been carefully looked for, run over, and found to have no existence in or near the places assigned them. Several of the principal groups and islands in the Pacific Ocean have been visited, examined, and surveyed; and friendly intercourse, and protective commercial regulations, established with the chiefs and natives. The discoveries in the Antarctic Ocean (Antarctic continent, — Observations for fixing the Southern Magnetic pole, &c.) preceded those of the French and English expeditions. The Expedition, during its absence, has also examined and surveyed a large portion of the Oregon Territory, a part of Upper California, including the Columbia and Sacramento Rivers, with their various tributaries. Several exploring parties from the Squadron have explored, examined, and fixed those portions of the Oregon Territory least known. A map of the Territory, embracing its Rivers, Sounds, Harbors, Coasts, Forts, &c., has been prepared, which will furnish the information relative to our possessions on the Northwest Coast, and the whole of Oregon. Experiments have been made with the pendulum, magnetic apparatus, and various other instruments, on all occasions, — the temperature of the ocean, at various depths ascertained in the different seas traversed, and full meteorological and other observations kept up during the cruise. Charts of all the surveys have been made, with views and sketches of headlands, towns or villages, &c., with descriptions of all that appertains to the localities, productions, language, customs, and manners. At some of the islands, this duty has been attended with much labor, exposure, and risk of life, — the treacherous character of the natives rendering it absolutely necessary that the officers and men should be armed, while on duty, and at all times prepared against their murderous attacks. On several occasions, boats have been absent from the different vessels of the Squadron on surveying duty, (the greater part of which has been performed in boats,) among islands, reefs, &c., for a period of ten, twenty, and thirty days at one time. On one of these occasions, two of the officers were killed at the Fiji group, while defending their boat’s crew from an attack by the Natives. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1839
February: During the Southern Hemisphere summer, Charles Wilkes moved into Antarctic waters.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
March: Charles Wilkes moved again into Antarctic waters.
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
December: Charles Wilkes left Sydney in New South Wales during the Southern Hemisphere summer and, sailing along vast ice-fields for several weeks, sighted what he took to be an Antarctic continent.
OH LOOKIE OVER THERE! HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1840
January 19, Sunday: Charles Wilkes supposed he sighted land as he moved along the edge of the ice pack south of Australia during the Southern Hemisphere summer.
He would claim to have made this observation on several later occasions as well, as he moved along the edge of the ice pack for some 1,500 miles. Although he couldn’t possibly have sighted any land directly from his reported positions, the highest known peaks always being in fact below his sea horizon, he did perhaps see something by reflection from the sky, in a local atmospheric phenomenon known as “looming.” Thus, Wilkes is considered by his fellow Americans to be the first to provide some proof of the existence of an Antarctic continent.3
OH LOOKIE OVER THERE!
Representative William Slade’s filibuster speech before the US House of Representatives, urging the immediate abolition of the practice of human enslavement throughout these United States of America, was continuing interminably. While the honorable Representative was flogging the issue to death, Henry C. Wright, quoting from the OLD TESTAMENT, was bringing before the readers of the Liberator the spectre of the blacks of America doing to the whites, under Frederick Douglass, what the Jews out of Egypt had done to the previous inhabitants of the Holy Land.4 The three million slaves in the South combine under Frederick Douglass, as the Jews combined under Moses, and march upon New York, take the city and slaughter every man, woman, and child in it; and then spread over the state, and kill “infants and sucklings,” and “every thing that breatheth in it; and take possession of the gold and silver, the horses, lands and cattle HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
for themselves.”
3. More or less simultaneous with the Wilkes expedition were expeditions from two other of the dominant players in Antarctic exploration, Great Britain and France. The French expedition, commanded by Captain Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville, explored the Antarctic Peninsula from January to March 1838 and landed on the Adélie Coast, on the other side of Antarctica, in January 1840. The French expedition sailed earlier than the American one, sighted the landmass earlier, and returned earlier. The British Expedition under James Clark Ross explored the Ross Sea in 1840-1841 and returned there again the following year.
(Captain Ross delighted in making a notation in his log whenever he was sailing across an area of the globe that had, by the Wilkes expedition, been charted as dry land.) 4. At some point Frederick Douglass would comment that Henry C. Wright had some sort of personal problem that resulted in the unfortunate fact, that he unwittingly “created against himself prejudices.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
February: Charles Wilkes moved again into Antarctic waters. He then went north to thoroughly explore the Feejee group of islands and visit the Hawaiian Islands, where he would measure the intensity of gravity by means of a pendulum at the summit of Mauna Loa.
SO, HOW HEAVY WAS SHE?
Spring: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot accepted the post of French ambassador to London, and shortly afterward Thiers succeeded to the ministry of foreign affairs. The professor would be received with distinction by Queen Victoria, and by British society. He would be able to persuade the British to return Napoleon’s corpse to France.5
Charles Wilkes began a survey of the coastline of the North American continent that would occupy his ship until Summer 1842. Upon his return he would find that his discoveries had been challenged (because the English explorer James Clark Ross had sailed directly across some of the locales that because of mirage Wilkes had identified as land) and his conduct as commander of his expedition called into question (to the extent that there would need to be a court martial). Learning that the French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville had first viewed the mainland of Antarctica on January 19th, 1840, Wilkes went back into his journals and altered his own date of initial observation from January 19th to January 16th.
5. Napoleon had died of stomach cancer after five years on St. Helena and his corpse, minus the penis, had been underground there, at this point, for some two decades. When dug up, the corpse would be discovered to be still in pretty fair condition. The frigate that would bring it back toward France, La Belle Poule, would be specially painted black to mark the solemnity of the occasion. That severed penis, it seems, now belongs to an American urologist, Dr. John Kingsley Lattimer, who bid $38,000 for it at an auction. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Henry Thoreau would later refer to this period as “that winter that I labored with a lethargy.”
Of the three south polar expeditions of the 1840s, that of the French captain Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville, of the English captain James Clark Ross, and of the American captain Charles Wilkes, the French
expedition had been first to set sail, first to sight the new polar landmass (Captain Jules Sébastien César D’Urville called it Terre Adélie, after his wife), and the first to return and announce a result. The two corvettes Astrolabe and Zélée had left Toulon in September 1837 and returned to make their announcement toward the end of 1840. Antarctic Explorations
Date Explorer Discovery
1738 Jean-Baptise Bouvet (French) Bouvet Island
1772 Yves-Joseph Kerguelen (French) Kerguelen Islands
1775 James Cook (British) South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands
1821 Nathanael Palmer (American) Antarctic Peninsula
1821 Fabian von Bellingshausen (Russian) Peter I Island, Alexander Island
1824 James Weddell (British) Weddell Sea
1840 Dumont d’Urville (French) Adelie Land
1841 James Clark Ross (British) Mt. Erebus, Victoria Land, Ross Ice Shelf
1842 Charles Wilkes (American) Wilkes Land
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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
NOT FIRST, BUT NOT LEAST HDT WHAT? INDEX
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It would require most of the century just to get this far:
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1841
The United States Exploring Expedition (also known as the Wilkes Expedition, and informally as the “Ex Ex”), a national project that organized the scientists of the United States to describe the natural features and organisms of the south seas, collected along the west coast of North America. Charles Wilkes explored the northwestern coast of America and the Columbia and Sacramento rivers.
In this year Dr. Augustus Addison Gould’s, an early member of the Boston Society of Natural History who in this year was becoming also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, read before his colleagues a paper entitled “Results of an Examination of the Species of Shells of Massachusetts, and of their Geographical Distribution.” This placed him at a scientific forefront, for it was the 1st attempt ever made to study all the mollusks of a particular geographical region. By the careful use of the microscope it had been possible for him to determine that of the shells found within the borders of the state, 42 were of land or fresh- water habitat, versus 203 of marine origin. While some of the marine species were to be found on the transatlantic shores, he pointed out, of the air-breathing species a certain number were common to both continents and some of these had been imported. He pointed out the influence of shore outlines, and HDT WHAT? INDEX
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demonstrated from a comparison of species that Cape Cod, since it stretches out into the sea in a curved direction some 40 or 50 miles, forms for some of these species an impassable barrier. Of the 203 marine species, 80 did not pass Cape Cod to the south, and 30 had not been found to pass to the north. He pointed up the important fact that certain species appear and disappear suddenly, leading to the conclusion that, in order to construct a correct catalogue of the shells of any region, it would be necessary to extend one’s observations through a series of years. During Spring 1830, for instance, Osteodesma had been strewed upon Chelsea Beach in great number, and of very large size, although it had never been observed there before and had seldom been seen since. Cyprina islandica, Solemya velum, Venus gemma, and Margarita arctica also presented instances of periodicity at long intervals. During Winter 1838/1839, Yoldia thraciæformis was frequently found in the stomachs of the sand-dab, although search for them had since then been almost fruitless.
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS: In the Report on the Invertebrate Animals, this singular fact is recorded, which teaches us to put a new value on time and space. “The distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean, some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto proved a barrier to the migrations of many species of Mollusca. Several genera and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other. Of the one hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Dr. Gould’s REPORT ON THE INVERTEBRATA OF MASSACHUSETTS, COMPRISING THE MOLLUSCA, CRUSTACEA, ANNELIDA, AND RADIATA: PUBLISHED AGREEABLY TO AN ORDER OF THE LEGISLATURE, BY THE COMMISSIONERS ON THE ZOÖLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE (Cambridge: Folsom, Wells, e and Thurston; OTIA CONCHOLOGICA, pp. 181-182, 237, 1862; Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 2 Ser., T. xvi, p. 379; American Journal of Science and Arts, xli, p. 378; Revue Zoölogique, 1841, p. 282).
A copy of this volume would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, and he would extract from it for NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS and for CAPE COD. MASS. INVERTEBRATA
Upon the return of this expedition, in 1846, the shells they had collected in various waters of the globe would be submitted to Dr. Gould of Boston for examination.
CAPE COD: We afterward saw some other kinds on the Bay side. Gould PEOPLE OF states that this Cape “has hitherto proved a barrier to the CAPE COD migrations of many species of Mollusca.” –“Of the one hundred and ninety-seven species [which he described in 1840 as belonging to Massachusetts], eighty-three do not pass to the South shore, and fifty are not found on the North shore of the Cape.”
AUGUSTUS ADDISON GOULD HDT WHAT? INDEX
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November 1, Monday: Charles Wilkes set sail from San Francisco, to visit Manila, Sooloo, Borneo, Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena.
Dansville, New York celebrated the opening of its 11-mile side-cut canal linking a settlement of Shakers called Sonyea with the Genesee Valley Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1842
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes had left an American port in August 1838 with an expedition of six vessels, explored in South Polar waters, and discovered Wilkes Land.
Upon his return in this year, he would face a court-martial board for his conduct toward his men as the officer in charge during this expedition, conduct which had been utterly deplorable. Antarctic Explorations
Date Explorer Discovery
1738 Jean-Baptise Bouvet (French) Bouvet Island
1772 Yves-Joseph Kerguelen (French) Kerguelen Islands
1775 James Cook (British) South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands
1821 Nathanael Palmer (American) Antarctic Peninsula
1821 Fabian von Bellingshausen (Russian) Peter I Island, Alexander Island
1824 James Weddell (British) Weddell Sea
1840 Dumont d’Urville (French) Adelie Land
1841 James Clark Ross (British) Mt. Erebus, Victoria Land, Ross Ice Shelf
1842 Charles Wilkes (American) Wilkes Land
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Some of the land discoveries claimed by Wilkes in this region, we now know, actually do not exist —
charitably, he may have been snookered by one of the atmospheric phenomena of the region, a “looming” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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that brings objects into view when actually they are still a bit below the horizon.
THE FROZEN SOUTH HDT WHAT? INDEX
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It would require most of the century just to get this far: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June 10, Friday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Indemnities for slaves on board the Comet and Encomium: Report of the Secretary of State.” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 27 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 242.
The expedition of Charles Wilkes cast anchor at New-York. Charges would be made against their leader by some of his officers, but at his court-martial he would be found guilty only of having imposed illegal punishments — and the result would be a mere reprimand.
Now hold out your hand!
July: With a shipmate, Herman Melville jumped ship to stay with natives of the Marquesas for a period amounting to several weeks (it may perhaps have seemed longer).
A Naval Court of Inquiry referred Charles Wilkes for court martial. Although they did not convict him of the bulk of the material brought forward, one of the charges did stick, that of excessive punishment of seamen. The court found it credible that aboard the Relief in Callao, when six crewmembers stole liquor from the stores, he had ordered them lashed with more than the legally allowable number of lashes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In this year and the following one, Charles Wilkes would serve on the coast survey, along the edge of the Weddell Sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1843
July 13, Thursday: At 39 Beacon Street in Boston, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow got married with Frances Appleton.
On this day and the following one, Frederick Douglass, George Bradburn, and John A. Collins were lecturing in Middlebury, Vermont.
Charles Wilkes, who had so long ago promoted himself from Lieutenant to Captain and begun to fly the flag of a Commodore as soon as he was out of sight of land, was at this point promoted to Commander.
(Clearly, abusing the men under your command is not regarded as a serious offense in the US Navy.)
At about this point Henry Thoreau was writing (presumably) to the publisher of THE DIAL. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1844
From this year into 1861, Charles Wilkes would be in Washington DC helping to prepare the elaborate report on his elaborate South Seas exploring expedition. Although the report was intended to consist of 28 quarto volumes, 9 of these would not be completed. Of those published, he would be the author of the NARRATIVE OF THE UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION (one of the illustrations is shown above: this would be 6 quarto volumes and 5 octavo volumes, Philadelphia, 1845; abridged edition, New-York, 1851), and its volumes on METEOROLOGY and HYDROGRAPHY. (He would also author WESTERN AMERICA, INCLUDING CALIFORNIA AND OREGON, to be printed at Philadelphia in 1849, and THEORY OF THE WINDS, to be printed at New-York in 1856.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1845
Charles Wilkes’s NARRATIVE OF THE UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION DURING THE YEARS 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, in the previous year, had been prepared and printed for the members of Congress. However, there had been a press run of merely 100 copies: two for France, two for Great Britain, two for Russia, two for the US Library of Congress, one for the Naval Lyceum in Brooklyn, one for Captain Hudson, one for Captain Ringgold, one for the author, and one each to 25 designated nations, left but 63 for the entire reading public. Therefore in this year it was reprinted in 6 quarto volumes and 5 octavo volumes in an “unofficial” edition to be offered for sale by Lea & Blanchard in Philadelphia.
VolumesAuthors Contents Printed Distributed Illustrations I-V Wilkes Narrative 1844 Apr.1845 5 maps VI Hale Ethnography & philol. 1846 May 1846 VII Dana Zoophytes 1846 May 1846 61 plates VIIIA Peale Mammalia & ornith. 1848 June 1849 VIIIB Cassin Mammalogy & ornith. 1858 Sept.1858 53 plates IX Pickering Races of man 1848 Aug.1849 X Dana Geology 1849 Sept.1849 21 plates XI Wilkes Meteorology 1851 early1854 XII Gould Mollusca & shells 1852 Dec.1852 52 plates XIII-XIV Dana Crustacea 1852/3 Feb1853/Feb’54 96 plates XV Gray Botany: Phaner. Pt.1 1854 mid-1854 100 plates XVI Brackenridge Botany: Crypt. Filices 1854 Fall 1854 46 plates XVII [various] Botany: Crypt. (various) 1874 ?Jan.1875 55 plates XVIII Gray Botany: Phaner. Pt.2 mss XIX Pickering Geogr.distr.animals&pls. 1854/76 XX Baird/Girard Herpetology 1858 Sept.1858 23 plates XXI-XXII Agassiz Ichthyology mss XXIII Wilkes Hydrography 1861 July 1873 106 chs. XXIV Wilkes Physics n/a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1847
The Royal Geographical Society awarded Charles Wilkes its gold Founders Medal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1849
Charles Wilkes’s WESTERN AMERICA, INCLUDING CALIFORNIA AND OREGON was printed in Philadelphia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Spring: Publication of Herman Melville’s MARDI: AND A VOYAGE THITHER, a political and philosophical allegory. In 1833 Dr. James Cowles Prichard had pioneered the term “monomania, meaning madness affecting one train of thought … adopted in late times instead of melancholia.”
Melville’s father-in-law Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw had utilized this concept in a legal opinion in 1844 and Melville deployed it 1st here (and then in MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE would deploy it again as the defining characteristic of the psychology of the maimed Captain Ahab, based perhaps on the unfortunate personality of HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Charles Wilkes). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
[Perhaps this is the point at which to mention that it is Henry Thoreau who appears in Brook Thomas’s 1987 monograph CROSS-EXAMINATION OF LAW AND LITERATURE: COOPER, HAWTHORNE, STOWE, AND MELVILLE (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, page 160) as a type case for the “abolitionists who would suspend established rule of law in order to pursue their own transcendental dreams and take revenge on what they saw to be the seat of sin.”6 According to Thomas, when Herman Melville caused the Pequod not to return to its home port, at the end of MOBY-DICK, but instead to suffer disaster at sea, this “might be Melville’s warning that the abolitionists’ voyage into unexplored continents,” abolitionism such as that of Thoreau of Concord, Massachusetts and such as that of Nathaniel P. Rogers, editor of the Herald of Freedom of Concord, New Hampshire, “does not herald freedom but disaster.” Thomas concludes that “If natural law is not benevolent, appeals to it can lead to violence and destruction” (Thomas’s proof is that Thoreau argued in defense of Rogers). –What Thomas seems to have neglected ever to notice is that when Thoreau defended Rogers he was defending this editor against William Lloyd Garrison, the dude who would have been the actual type case for the abolitionists of that period who were eminently guilty of attempting to “suspend established rule of law in order to pursue their own transcendental dreams and take revenge on what they saw to be the seat of sin.” If any abolitionist was the Captain Ahab of the Pequod, therefore, it would have been Garrison rather than Thoreau or Rogers. —Thomas simply isn’t close enough to that 19th-Century argument to keep the players straight or understand what sides there were and who was on what side.7]
6. Typically, Thoreau appears in the pages of Thomas’s writings as part of the recurring phrase “Emerson and Thoreau” (although, on one occasion, Thomas does cast this duo as “Thoreau and Emerson”) — for instance, on Thomas’s page 276 the telling combination of names occurs fully seven-count-’em-seven times. It is as if Thomas were too far off to be able to notice these persons, except as a pair. 7. Although Brook Thomas was my near neighbor, and we came to each other’s houses occasionally, he never ever discussed any of this with me (as a faculty spouse I was transparent, a nonentity). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1851
Lewis Henry Morgan’s LEAGUE OF THE HO-DÉ-NO-SAU-NEE, OR IROQUOIS. Henry Thoreau would take extensive notes while reading this book.
Charles Wilkes’s NARRATIVE of his polar expedition, which had been prepared in 1845 in Philadelphia in 6 quarto volumes and 5 octavo volumes, was at this point reprinted in an abridged edition by a publisher in New- York.
At some point during this year the at-loose-ends Unitarian Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson delivered a Sunday evening lecture entitled “Merchants.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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J.G. Heck’s ICONOGRAPHIC ENCYCLOPEDIA:
January 6, Monday: A surviving record of the Concord Social Library in Emerson’s handwriting
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
(1817-1894) was the excavator of its ruins], Charles Dickens’s PICKWICK PAPERS, William Makepeace Thackeray’s VANITY FAIR, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s SCARLET LETTER, Lieutenant Jenkins’s UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION (one of the later volumes in the elaborate series of reports on the elaborate South Seas exploring expedition of Charles Wilkes, generally titled REPORTS OF THE US EXPLORING EXPEDITION OF 1838-1842), and a selection of British and American journals:
John Stacy, Concord bookseller and stationer, had been the librarian of the Concord Social Library, which had been established in 1821 to house the collection of the earlier Charitable Library Society, and the library materials had been being maintained in his bookstore on the Milldam. The records and holdings of the Concord Social Library were in this year being transferred to the Concord Town Library — and in 1873 would be passed on to the Concord Free Public Library. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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October: Publication of a ms that had been entitled “The Whale,” as MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE, dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 1833, Dr. James Cowles Prichard had pioneered “the term monomania, meaning madness affecting one train of thought … adopted in late times instead of melancholia.”
Melville’s father-in-law, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, had utilized this concept in a legal opinion in 1844, and Melville had deployed it in 1849 in MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER, and here he deployed it as the defining characteristic of the psychology of the maimed Captain Ahab, based perhaps on the unfortunate personality of Charles Wilkes.
This book was considered, however, by Melville’s boss at the Literary World, Evert Augustus Duyckinck, to HDT WHAT? INDEX
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be immoral.8 Immoral it may not be — but is it accurate? It states that the skeleton of Bentham hangs for
candelabra in the library of one of his executors, and although it is true that Bentham had suggested that the bodies of the dead be used as remembrances of them, and invented the term “auto-icon” for such use, and had suggested that the dead person’s face might be preserved with copal varnish, it is also the case that his own face looked so gruesome after death and autopsy that the embalming surgeon preserved the body merely by placing a waxen image on top of his dressed-up skull.
His body bones are not within the dummy underneath that authentic wax-encrusted skull in the closet at Cambridge, but this Melvillian disposition of Bentham’s body bones is something of which I have not elsewhere seen confirmation: But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham’s skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any Leviathan’s articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully 8. One wonders whether Bronson Alcott ever read this MOBY-DICK book. In Chapter 35 we read that you’ll never get rich if you let yourself get taken in tow by a “sunken-eyed young Platonist.” In Chapter 78 we read of a honey-collector in Ohio who leaned into a honey tree, slipped, and was embalmed, and then Melville hits us with this punchline: “How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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invested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it.
There was a speed and pulling contest between various designs of locomotives on the Western Railroad between Wilmington MA and Lowell MA. William Mason, a textile manufacturer of Taunton MA, witnessed this contest and determined to enter the business of manufacturing locomotives. Perhaps some of Mr. Mason’s locomotives would assist some Americans in obtaining the comparative freedom of Canada, Americans such as this Henry Williams who was fleeing his father and owner, locomotives such as this one pulling the 5PM train north out of Concord, upon which our Henry had positioned this fleeing Henry. UNDERGROUND RAILROAD HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1854
October 3: Charles Wilkes married again, this time to Mary H. Lynch Bolton. They would have four children.
Bronson Alcott wrote Abba Alcott in Boston from Benjamin Marston Watson’s “The Hillside” mansion in Plymouth, Massachusetts, indicating that he planned to remain there until Henry Thoreau arrived and had an opportunity to deliver his talk so that he could then escort Thoreau back to Boston — therefore she and the girls would see him by Wednesday or Thursday of the following week.
Watson wrote Thoreau from Plymouth, mentioning James Walter Spooner: Plymouth Oct 30 My dear Sir— I am glad to learn from Mr Spooner that you are really coming down, with the tripod too, which is so good news that I hardly dared to expect it. It seems a little un- certain whether you intend to read in the morning as
Page 2 well as evening, and so I write to enquire, that there may be no mistake in the announcement. Please let me know by return mail which will be in time. Very truly yr B.M. Watson HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Page 3 Postmark: [ ] OCT 3 [ ] Postage: PAID 3 Address: H. D. Thoreau Concord Mass HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1855
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.9 Vo l u m e s 9. 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
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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
September 14: Charles Wilkes received a commission as a Captain.
Sept.14. (1855) P.M. — To Hubbard’s Close. I scare from an oak by the side of the Close a young hen- hawk, which, launching off with a scream and a heavy flight, alights on the topmost plume of a large pitch pine in the swamp northward, bending it down, with its back toward me, where it might be mistaken for a plume against the sky, the light makes all things so black. It has a red tail; black primaries; scapulars and wing-coverts; gray-brown back showing much white and whitish head. It keeps looking round, first this side then that, warily. I see no fringed gentian yet. It costs so much to publish, would it not be better for the author to put his manuscripts in a safe? HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1856
Charles Wilkes’s WESTERN AMERICA, THEORY OF THE WINDS was printed in New-York. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1858
Charles Frédéric Girard wrote the report on Herpetology for the United States Exploring Expedition during the years 1838-1842 under the command of Captain Charles Wilkes (for government reasons, however, the author of this needed to be cited as Spencer Fullerton Baird, who asserted in the introduction that he himself had not touched pen to paper on the project). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1861
November 8, Friday: Charles Wilkes had been allowed to return to active duty during the period of civil war, despite his having been convicted by court-martial for excessive punishment of seamen. On this day his USS San Jacinto intercepted at sea in the West Indies the British mail-steamer Trent, bound from Havana to St. Thomas and then for Southampton, England, and he sent Lieutenant Donald M. Fairfax on board to bring off Confederate commissioners John Slidell and James Mason, with their secretaries. The officials would be taken to Fort Warren in Boston harbor. This would cause him to be seen by many as a hero, and the Navy Department would award him an emphatic commendation, with the US Congress passing a resolution of thanks. However, this “Trent Affair” would cause much tension between the US and England. On the demand of the British government that Mason and Slidell should be given up, Secretary of State W.H. Seward would comply explaining in his despatch that, although the commissioners and their papers had been contraband of war, and although therefore Wilkes had acted properly in capturing them, what he should have done was take the Trent into port as a prize for adjudication. As he had neglected so to do, instead constituting himself as the judge in the matter, for the United States national government to approve of his act would be for it for the first time to sanction the “right of search,” a right which it had always previously refused to recognize. The prisoners would therefore be released.
With Britain threatening to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy, Wilkes would once again face court- martial, and would again be found guilty of having gone beyond his limits, and his promotions would be rescinded. This time they would dispose of him permanently, on the retired list. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1861
Charles Wilkes was placed in command of the USS San Jacinto, which sailed in pursuit of the Confederate privateer Sumter.
November 8, Friday: Charles Wilkes had been allowed to return to active duty during the period of civil war, despite his having been convicted by court-martial for excessive punishment of seamen. On this day his USS San Jacinto intercepted at sea in the West Indies the British mail-steamer Trent, bound from Havana to St. Thomas and then for Southampton, England, and he sent Lieutenant Donald M. Fairfax on board to bring off Confederate commissioners John Slidell and James Mason, with their secretaries. The officials would be taken to Fort Warren in Boston harbor. This would cause him to be seen by many as a hero, and the Navy Department would award him an emphatic commendation, with the US Congress passing a resolution of thanks. However, this “Trent Affair” would cause much tension between the US and England. On the demand of the British government that Mason and Slidell should be given up, Secretary of State W.H. Seward would comply explaining in his despatch that, although the commissioners and their papers had been contraband of war, and although therefore Wilkes had acted properly in capturing them, what he should have done was take the Trent into port as a prize for adjudication. As he had neglected so to do, instead constituting himself as the judge in the matter, for the United States national government to approve of his act would be for it for the first time to sanction the “right of search,” a right which it had always previously refused to recognize. The prisoners would therefore be released.
With Britain threatening to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy, Wilkes would once again face court- martial, and would again be found guilty of having gone beyond his limits, and his promotions would be rescinded. This time they would dispose of him permanently, on the retired list. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1862
Charles Wilkes was put in command of the James River flotilla and in the course of this year would shell City Point.
According to Charles Hudson, historian of Marlborough and Sudbury,10 the American aboriginal Nipmuc of Massachusetts were doomed to disappear, for “such is the order of Providence.” He taught that in the “light of rational philosophy, or a pure and elevated religion,” the “disappearance of the native tribes should fill us with rejoicing rather than with regret.” They are “crude and uncivilized,” and “in the Providence of God seem destined to fade away.” Since we white people are such “sympathetic beings,” we must harden ourselves to an understanding that these peoples were “destined to perish under Divine administration.” On the other hand, no “acts of injustice or cruelty” would be justified, to hasten them along their sad way, for “an expiring nation, like an expiring individual is justly entitled to our sympathy and kind assistance” — the knowledge that they are destined to perish furnishes “no more justification in accelerating their doom, than the belief that any of our friends were sick unto death, would justify us in adopting measures to hasten their departure.” Rather than bloody our hands we should simply watch as they go, aware that any assistance that we might attempt to render would be simply wasted effort. Indeed, some white people might find a useful source of “melancholy in the reflection that the natives of these hills and plains have all disappeared,” for some 19th-Century residents do in this manner “live and thrive on the ruins of the past.”
July 16, Wednesday: Charles Wilkes was promoted to Commodore, and took charge of a special squadron in the West Indies. This would be rescinded and he would be placed on the retired list with the rank of Captain on November 12, 1862.
September 15, Monday: The 12,000 Federal soldiers in the garrison at Harper’s Ferry surrendered to the Confederates.
Charles Wilkes received an appointment as an acting Rear Admiral.
10. Charles Hudson, HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MARLBOROUGH, MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS FROM ITS SETTLEMENT IN 1657 TO 1811 [shortened title] (Boston: T. R. Marvin & Son, 1862) 62-63. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
November 12, Wednesday: Charles Wilkes had been promoted to Commodore on July 16th and had been made an acting Rear Admiral as of September 15th. These appointments were at this point rescinded, since he had made certain comments against the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, and had been court-martialed and found guilty of disobedience, disrespect, insubordination, and conduct unbecoming an officer, and he was placed on the retired list with the rank of Captain. His sentence included a public reprimand. The plan was to suspend him from naval duty for three years, but this period would be reduced to one year. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1864
June 25, Saturday: The London Conference on Denmark concluded so indecisively that Austria and Prussia were able to resume their war.
King Wilhelm I of Wurtemberg died, and was succeeded by his son Karl.
Charles Wilkes was placed on the retired list due to his age.
There was fighting at Staunton River / Blacks and Whites. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1866
July 25, Wednesday: Charles Wilkes had been on the US Navy’s retired list at the rank of Captain, but at this point his rank on the retired list was altered to that of Rear Admiral.
The federal government of the United States allocated $17,000 to carry out its treaty with Great Britain proclaimed July 11, 1862 (STATUTES AT LARGE, XIV. 226). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1877
February 8, Thursday: Charles Wilkes died at the age of 78 in Washington DC (burial would at first be in Rock Creek Cemetery but in 1909 the grave would be relocated to Arlington National Cemetery). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1909
August: Charles Wilkes had succumbed to old age in 1877 and the body had been placed in Rock Creek Cemetery near Washington DC, but at this point someone found himself unable to leave well enough alone — and the casket was relocated to the Arlington National Cemetery. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1976
David Jaffé, in THE STORMY PETREL AND THE WHALE: SOME ORIGINS OF MOBY-DICK (Baltimore: Port City Press), suggested Charles Wilkes as Herman Melville’s model for the personality of Captain Ahab.
WAS MOBY-DICK ANTARCTICA? HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
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 5, 2014
The People of Walden: Captain Charles Wilkes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
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
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN:CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN