Matthew Fontaine Maury, Lieutenant, U.S.N.

“ XXXIV. So, in a little while, there were more than a thousand navigators engaged day and night, and in all parts of the ocean, in making and recording observations according to a uniform plan, and in furthering this attempt to increase our knowledge as to the winds and currents of the sea, and other phenomena that relate to its safe navigation and physical geography. ”

“ Though they may be enemies in all else, here they are to be friends. Every ship that navigates the high seas with these charts and blank abstract logs on board may henceforth be regarded as a floating observatory, a temple of science. ”

“ XXIII. Thus the great highway from the United States to the Cape of Good Hope nearly crossed the Atlantic, it was discovered, three times. The other parts of the ocean by the wayside were blank, untraveled spaces. All the vessels that sailed went by one road and returned by the other. Now and then there was a sort of a country cross-road, that was frequented by robbers and bad men as they passed on their voyage from Africa to the West Indies and back. ”

“ XXX. Nevertheless, impressed with these legends and traditions, the early navigators of this country, when they first commenced to double the Cape of Good Hope on trading voyages, thought it most prudent to make the best of their way to the route from Europe, which had been often tried and was well known. They aimed to fall in with this route about the Cape Verde Islands. The winds there threw them back on this side of the Atlantic, upon the coast of Brazil, and so they had to cross the ocean again to reach the Cape of Good Hope. ”

“ V. Perhaps it might be the first voyage of a young navigator to the given port, when his own personal experience of the winds to be expected, the currents to be encountered by the way, would itself be blank. If so, there would be the wind and current chart. It would spread out before him the tracks of a thousand vessels that had preceded him on the same voyage, wherever it might be, and that, too, at the same season of the year. ”

“ XL. Prussia, Spain, the free city of Hamburg, the republics of Bremen and Chili, and the Empires of Austria and Brazil, have since offered their cooperation also in the same plan.
XLI. Thus the sea has been brought regularly within the domains of philosophical research, and crowded with observers.
XLII. In peace and in war these observations are to be carried on; and, in case any of the vessels on board of which they are conducted may be captured, the abstract log — as the journal which contains these observations is called — is to be held sacred. ”

“ XVII. A system of philosophical research, which is so rich with fruits and abundant with promise, could not fail to attract the attention and commend itself to the consideration of the seafaring community of the whole civilized world. ”