Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence

by Louis Agassiz

Leaving Boston the 16th of October, I went by railroad to New Haven, passing through Springfield. The rapidity of the locomotion is frightful to those who are unused to it, but you adapt yourself to the speed, and soon become, like all the rest of the world, impatient of the slightest delay. I well understand that an antipathy for this mode of travel is possible. There is something infernal in the irresistible power of steam, carrying such heavy masses along with the swiftness of lightning. The habits growing out of continued contact with railroads, and the influence they exert on a portion of the community, are far from agreeable until one is familiar with them. You would cry out in dismay did you see your baggage flung about pell-mell like logs of wood, trunks, chests, traveling-bags, hat-boxes, all in the same mill, and if here and there something goes to pieces no one is astonished; never mind! we go fast,—we gain time,—that is the essential thing.

The manners of the country differ so greatly from ours that it seems to me impossible to form a just estimate regarding them, or, indeed, to pronounce judgment at all upon a population so active and mobile as that of the Northern States of the Union, without having lived among them for a long time. I do not therefore attempt any such estimate. I can only say that the educated Americans are very accessible and very pleasant. They are obliging to the utmost degree; indeed, their cordiality toward strangers exceeds any that I have met elsewhere. I might even add that if I could complain of anything it would be of an excess, rather than a lack, of attention. I have often found it difficult to make it understood that the hotel, where I can work at my ease, suits me better than the proffered hospitality. . .

But what a country is this! all along the road between Boston and Springfield are ancient moraines and polished rocks. No one who had seen them upon the track of our present glaciers could hesitate as to the real agency by which all these erratic masses, literally covering the country, have been transported. I have had the pleasure of converting already several of the most distinguished American geologists to my way of thinking; among others, Professor Rogers, who will deliver a public lecture upon the subject next Tuesday before a large audience.

A characteristic feature of American life is to be found in the frequent public meetings where addresses are delivered. Shortly after my arrival in Boston I was present at a meeting of some three thousand workmen, foremen of workshops, clerks, and the like. No meeting could have been more respectable and well-conducted. All were neatly dressed; even the simplest laborer had a clean shirt. It was a strange sight to see such an assemblage, brought together for the purpose of forming a library, and listening attentively in perfect quiet for two hours to an address on the advantages of education, of reading, and the means of employing usefully the leisure moments of a workman's life. The most eminent men vie with each other in instructing and forming the education of the population at large. I have not yet seen a man out of employment or a beggar, except in New York, which is a sink for the emptyings of Europe. Yet do not think that I forget the advantages of our old civilization. Far from it. I feel more than ever the value of a past which belongs to you and in which you have grown up. Generations must pass before America will have the collections of art and science which adorn our cities, or the establishments for public instruction, sanctuaries as it were, consecrated by the devotion of those who give themselves wholly to study. Here all the world works to gain a livelihood or to make a fortune. Few establishments (of learning) are old enough, or have taken sufficiently deep root in the habits of the people, to be safe from innovation; very few institutions offer a combination of studies such as, in its ensemble, meets the demands of modern civilization. All is done by the single efforts of individuals or of corporations, too often guided by the needs of the moment. Thus American science lacks the scope which is characteristic of higher instruction in our old Europe. Objects of art are curiosities but little appreciated and usually still less understood. On the other hand, the whole population shares in the advanced education provided for all. . .From Springfield the railroad follows the course of the Connecticut as far as Hartford, turning then directly toward the sea-coast. The valley strikingly resembles that of the Rhine between Carlsruhe and Heidelberg. The same rock, the same aspect of country, and gres bigarre* (* Trias.) everywhere. The forest reminds one of Odenwald and of Baden-Baden. Nearer the coast are cones of basalt like those of Brissac and the Kaiserstuhl. The erratic phenomena are also very marked in this region; polished rocks everywhere, magnificent furrows on the sandstone and on the basalt, and parallel moraines defining themselves like ramparts upon the plain.

At New Haven I passed several days at the house of Professor Silliman, with whom I have been in correspondence for several years. The University (Yale) owes to the efforts of the Professor a fine collection of minerals and extensive physical and chemical apparatus. Silliman is the patriarch of science in America. For thirty years he has edited an important scientific journal, the channel through which, ever since its foundation, European scientific researches have reached America. . .One of his sons-in-law, Mr. Shepard,* (* An error: Mr. Shepard was not the son-in-law of Professor Silliman.—ED.) is also chemical professor in the University of South Carolina. Another, Mr. Dana, still a very young man, strikes me as likely to be the most distinguished naturalist of the United States. He was a member of the expedition around the world under the command of Captain Wilkes, and has just published a magnificent volume containing monographs of all the species of polyps and corals, with curious observations on their mode of growth and on the coral islands. I was surprised to find in the collection at New Haven a fine specimen of the great fossil salamander of Oeningen, the "Homo diluvii testis" of Scheuchzer.

From New Haven I went to New York by steamboat. The Sound, between Long Island and the coast of Connecticut, presents a succession of cheerful towns and villages, with single houses scattered over the country, while magnificent trees overhang the sea; we constantly disturbed numbers of aquatic birds which, at our approach, fluttered up around the steamer, only to alight farther on. I have never seen such flocks of ducks and gulls.

At New York I hastened to see Auguste Mayor, of whom my uncle will no doubt have given you news, since I wrote to him. Obliged to continue my road in order to join Mr. Gray at Princeton I stopped but one day in New York, the greater part of which I passed with Mr. Redfield, author of a paper on the fossil fishes of Connecticut. His collection, which he has placed at my disposal, has great interest for me; it contains a large number of fossil fishes of different kinds, from a formation in which but one species has been found in Europe. The new red sandstone of Connecticut will also fill a gap in the history of fossil fishes, and this acquisition is so much the more important, because, at the epoch of the gres bigarre, a marked change took place in the anatomical character of fishes. It presents an intermediate type between the primitive fishes of the ancient deposits and the more regular forms of the jurassic deposits.

Mr. Asa Gray, professor of botany at Cambridge, near Boston, had offered to accompany me on my journey to Washington. We were to meet at the house of Professor Torrey, at Princeton, a small town half a day's journey from New York, and the seat of a considerable university, one of the oldest in the United States. The physical department, under the direction of Professor Henry, is remarkably rich in models of machinery and in electrical apparatus, to which the professor especially devotes himself. The museum contains a collection of animals and fossil remains. In the environs of the town, in the ditches, is found a rare kind of turtle, remarkable for the form of the jaws and the length of the tail. I wish very much to procure one, were it only to oblige Professor Johannes Muller, of Berlin, who especially desires one for investigation. But I have failed thus far; the turtles are already withdrawn into their winter quarters. Mr. Torrey promises me some, however, in the spring. It is not easy to get them because their bite is dreaded.

After this I passed four days in Philadelphia. Here, notwithstanding my great desire to see the beautiful country along the shores of the rich bay of Delaware and the banks of the Schuylkill, between which the city lies, I was entirely occupied with the magnificent collections of the Academy of Science and of the Philosophical Society. The zoological collections of the Academy of Science are the oldest in the United States, the only ones, except those of the Wilkes Expedition, which can equal in interest those of Europe. There are the collections of Say, the earliest naturalist of distinction in the United States; there are also the fossil remains and the animals described by Harlan, by Godman, and by Hayes, and the fossils described by Conrad and Morton. Dr. Morton's unique collection of human skulls is also to be found in Philadelphia. Imagine a series of six hundred skulls, mostly Indian, of all the tribes who now inhabit or formerly inhabited America. Nothing like it exists elsewhere. This collection alone is worth a journey to America. Dr. Morton has had the kindness to give me a copy of his great illustrated work representing all the types of his collection. Quite recently a generous citizen of Philadelphia has enriched this museum with the fine collection of birds belonging to the Duke of Rivoli. He bought it for 37,000 francs, and presented it to his native city.

The number of fossil remains comprised in these collections is very considerable; mastodons especially, and fossils of the cretaceous and jurassic deposits. . .Imagine that all this is at my full disposal for description and illustration, and you will understand my pleasure. The liberality of the American naturalists toward me is unparalleled.