Address on the subject of a surveying and exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas, delivered in the Hall of Representatives ... with correspondence and documents

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ADDRESS, o-J THE SUBJECT OF A SURVEYING AND EXPLORING EXPEDITION TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN AND SOUTH SEAS. DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF REPRESENTATIVES ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 3, 1836. BY J. N. REYNOLDS. WITH CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS. " The assembly to which I address myself, is too enlightened not to be fully sensible, how much a flourishing state of the arts and sciences contributes to national prosperity and reputation." — Washington's Message to Congress, Dec. 7th, 1796. NEW YORK. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS. 1836. "House of Representatives, April Id, 1836. " Mr. Pearce, of Rhode Island, from the Committee on Commerce, reported the following resolution : — "Resolved, That the use of this Hall be granted to J. N. Reynolds, Esq., on Satur day evening next, for the purpose of delivering an address, on the subject of an Expe dition, or Voyage of Discovery, to the South Sea and Pacific Ocean. " The Resolution was agreed to."

Preface

. On the 3d of April, I delivered the following discourse, on the subject embraced in the Resolution of the 2d ; and, from a wish to make my views as extensively known to the public as possible, have concluded to do it, through the medium of the public press. To the remarks then offered, I have made a few additions, such as naturally grew out of the progress of the measures taken in congress, and among the scientific throughout the country. I have received several letters from distinguished individuals, having a direct and luminous bearing on the great objects of the enterprise, which I deem it my duty to make public. In some of them, my friends have spoken with warmth and partiality of me, and my humble labors, which it may seem like vanity in me to publish ; but I have no right to garble their letters, and, therefore, must give them entire.

I can, however, assure my readers, that the exertions of ten years, in a cause of magnitude and of a public character, now shaded with fears, and now cheered by hopes, have taken away much of the susceptibility of feeling, which generally follows praise or blame. The address, correspondence, to

PREFACE.

. and documents, contained in the following pages, may, perhaps, be regarded as the argument, history, and proje, of the intended expedition, and, in this view, may be of some interest to the pub lic, at the present time. I am aware that more might have been said, and better said, on this subject ; and I shall, therefore, be happy in finding that the reader has added new arguments to mine, to give an impulse and character to a great national under taking. J. N. R. New York, Oct. 10, 1836. ADDRESS. Believing that it is the sacred duty of every member of society to contribute, according to his possessions, to the general treasury of knowledge, I have come, on this occasion, to cast in my mite ; happy that I have something to offer, and humble that the offering is of no greater value. At an early period of my life I imbibed a relish, perhaps acci dentally, for books of voyages and travels, when I had not as yet seen the ocean.

Though a dweller in the western forests, I could reason from effects to causes, and needed only the roughly sketched history of the early settlement of our country to convince me, that the maritime enterprise of our ancestors was an important element in the foundation of our subsequent power ; and that whatever tended to increase the stimulus to exertion, and extend the field of commercial research, was to add more to our national resources, than to discover mines of diamonds, or heap our trea suries with coined gold. The analogy of the sister branches, agriculture and manufactures have come to our aid ; and if when fields are run out, the farmer is obliged to till new ones ; and if when markets fail, the ingenuity of the manufacturer is tasked to find others, surely he who can indicate to our rapidly increasing marine a new and untried sea, or an undiscovered island, where enterprise may be enriched, and the country acquire a footing, deserves well of his fellow-men.

ADDRESS. 6 Discovery, therefore, though the term be disguised by the mode of applying it, has added much to the success of every great interest in every country, and it is in this connection that we propose to show : First, by a general outline, what our forefathers have done, — with the spirit they evinced ; Secondly, what our neighbours have accomplished ; and, Lastly, what remains for us to do, and the reasons why we should do it. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the settle ments of American colonists were but so many watchfires along the shores of the Atlantic, whose light reflected upon the waters by the surrounding forests, invited the seafarer and emigrant, whether allured to our shores by the love of enterprise, or driven to seek refuge in a new world from the political convulsions of the old.

In an incredibly short time they became acquainted, not only with the general outline of the coast, but also with our harbours, bays, and rivers, even to the nicest indentations, and with a hardihood and sagacious foresight which has no parallel in history, fitted out exploring expeditions to obtain a more accurate knowledge of our shores, when the Indian was prowling around their dwellings, and the population was scarcely sufficiently numerous to raise the necessaries of life. John Smith of Virginia, in 1614, six years before the pilgrims raised their huts on the sands of Plymouth, coasted along the shore from James River to Ports mouth, and surveyed the harbours and islands of New England. The pilgrims, too, though thinned by an epidemic to nearly half their number, hardly waited for a summer's sun, before they com menced ship-building, withthe intent of exploring the southern coast, and trafficking with the natives.

In less than half a century, the amount of American tonnage was considerably increased, and had begun to excite, in a slight degree, the jealousy of the mother country, which was afterwards ADDRESS. 7 so strongly manifested by her coercive acts. A reference to the records of the times will show, that in 1665, when the militia of Massachusetts did not exceed four thousand in number, she pos sessed eighty vessels of between twenty and forty tons burthen ; about forty of between forty and one hundred tons ; and twelve ships of one hundred tons and upward. New-York, likewise, having about this time fallen into the hands of the English, was aroused from her apathetic slumber, and like an awakened giant, conscious of inbred might, began to stretch her arms along the adjoining coasts and over the ocean, gathering up the richest pro ducts of the old and new world, and giving in return the first fruits of the almost untouched mines of our internal resources.

Those also whose inclination led them to become the pioneers of the wilderness, carried with them the same disposition, and next to the log hut, before making a wheelbarrow or a cart, they hollowed out a log to cross the nearest expanse of water, and com mune with the settlers on the opposite side of the stream. But perhaps the ardour with which the colonists pursued the fisheries is the most striking feature in our maritime history, since it wrung reluctant praise from our enemies, and called forth the eulogiums of the most distinguished orators and statesmen.* * On this subject, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of extracting a glowing fragment of eloquence from the gifted Burke, in his celebrated speech, delivered in Parliament, on American conciliation : "As to the wealth which the Colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar.

You surely thought those acquisi tions of value, for they seemed even to excite your envy ; and yet the spirit, by which that enterprising employment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fisheries, whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay, and Davis's Straits ; whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold ; that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of ADDRESS. 8 These facts must show conclusively, that the elements of mari time enterprise have been from the earliest period of our history incorporated with the character of our people.

From this lucrative employment foreign commerce grew and flourished, and through this and the lumber and fur trade, was derived the circulating medium of the country ; but still much of the trade of the interior was subject to many inconveniences from the difficulties of transportation. The increasing power of Eng land, as manifested by the prosperity of her American colonies, was viewed by France with undisguised alarm, and was the prin cipal cause of the first and second French wars, in which the main struggle was upon American ground. This put into requisition all the energies of the colonists, who, at their own expense, fitted out numerous privateers, which were the source of no less annoy ance to the enemy than of wealth to their owners, and which contributed the most timely and efficient assistance to the mother country.

It was in this school of hardship, at an early period, that we acquired that naval science, and familiarity with the ocean, which soon after enabled us to compete with that power whose peculiar boast is that she rules the waves, and whose sons glory that their " march is on the mountain wave, their home is on the deep." It was by passing this trying ordeal, and braving the winter's cold national ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious industry. "Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of both the Poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line, and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries.

No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." ADDRESS. 9 and summer's heat in the probationary war with France, that we were trained by the wise hand of a superintending Providence for the war of Independence. Then it was, that from a state of utter debasement, we raised ourselves to the rank of a maratime nation, and with vessels equipped, for the most part by individual enterprise, made ourselves more formidable to English commerce than France with all her naval force had ever been.

From the vessels captured, near two thousand in number, from the enemy, our army was supplied with clothing and ammunition at two of the most critical periods of the revolution ; and Washington himself ex pressly says, that the army would have inevitably been forced to retreat, and perhaps disband itself when besieging Boston, had not two English ships, laden with military stores, been captured by Captain Manly in Boston harbour. This occurred when there remained but two barrels of gunpowder for twenty thousand men. Many other instances might be adduced to show how invaluable was the aid afforded by our infant marine at that eventful crisis in our past history. At the close of the war, commerce began anew upon a more enlarged scale, and higher enterprise ; but there were numerous obstacles in the way, until after the adoption of the federal consti tution.

Prior to that period, a committee of marine had managed all our maritime affairs, and their energies were often wasted in considering first principles, now so well established. In 1794, the first proposition for forming a navy was made in congress under the constitution. In 1798, all our naval force was called into requisition, and covered itself with glory ; and subsequently secured the admiration of the world, in humbling the fierce cor sairs of the Mediterranean. Thus our commerce had been in some measure protected, and our national honour defended, before the war of 1812. While trammelled in the fetters of colonial dependance, the colonists had shown themselves eager to perform everything ADDRESS. 10 within the compass of their abilities, to aid commercial enter prise ; and not satisfied with the mere examination of dangerous shoals and sand-banks, had made scientific observations to enable the sailor to ascertain his course with greater precision and safety.

Twice did they send scientific men to distant parts of the country, to observe the transit of Venus over the sun ; and they accomplished their task with astonishing accuracy, considering how imperfect the instruments they used were, when compared with those of the present day. Since the Declaration of Inde pendence, however, till the period of the last war, it is not known that government expended anything (if we except a small appro priation for the expedition to the Rocky mountains) in behalf of scientific or exploring expeditions. Can any reason be assigned for this neglect ? Perhaps it may be found in the peculiar state of our great interests at that exciting period. The agriculturist, viewing the constantly accumulating profits of the merchant, thought it useless to support any measure which might throw yet more wealth into his scale.

The merchant, on his side, engrossed in the pursuit of wealth, could not stop to calculate dangers between him and his contemplated result ; or, if he had, could he wait for their removal ? At this time there was but little competition among merchants; — each had enough to do. Soon after the French Revo lution broke out, and the European nations were in arms, we had the carrying trade to ourselves, and accumulated wealth beyond the profits of any people in modern times. But the golden harvest did not last long. In 1806, the exac tions of the belligerent powers grew more oppressive, and our commerce met with many severe checks and embarrassments. The embargo of 1807 followed the Berlin and Milan decrees, together with the British orders in council, and non-intercourse and war ensued soon after.

Our navy had not been increased in any degree commensurate with the extent of our commerce ; and ADDRESS. 11 accordingly, though it covered itself with glory at that trying period, it proved inadequate to the protection of our ships on the high seas, and we emerged from the contest with a commercial marine crippled and diminished to an alarming extent. But no sooner had peace been proclaimed, than our commerce again flourished, and chartered every gale. The South Atlantic and Pacific oceans, where our enterprise had been checked, be came our highways, and every estuary and river was again the resort of our hardy navigators. It is only with this new Satur nian reign that my dawn of recollection commences, and then only after some years of this prosperous epoch had elapsed. Not only had new channels of trade been opened by the persevering industry of our merchants, until the extreme east had been laid under contribution, but our fisheries had again extended from our coasts to the shores of Brazil, thence running the longitude to Africa, and around each cape throughout the great Pacific and Indian oceans, to the Maldives and the Isles of Japan.

New staple productions of agriculture had likewise sprung up in the interval ; and cotton, which had been introduced into this country several years subsequent to the Revolutionary War, as a mere botanical experiment, now became the most important article of commerce, throwing into a secondary rank bread-stuffs, tobacco, rice, and other articles formerly first in the commercial scale. The milder climes of the south had used cotton stuffs almost exclusively as wearing apparel ; but not so the northern, till the improvements in machinery had so facilitated their fabrication that millions are now clothed in manufactures of this article. The sugar of the south, with the hemp and flax of the west, had by this time come into general use, and the upper region supplied bagging for the lower country.

The manufacturers, after no small opposition from rival interests, began to influence national econo my ; and having succeeded in establishing themselves, were of no doubtful success. The march of internal improvements had ADDRESS. 12 now commenced, with cautious and prudential pleadings on the one hand, and enthusiastic, uncalculating ardour on the other, and in its progress soon opened new markets for our agricultural and manufactured wealth. By these means, where the necessaries of life only were to be obtained, and those of the simplest kind, articles were required which but a short time before were deemed luxuries. As the interior was travelling down, the seaboard was travel ling up Everything was quickened by the spirit of progressive advance ment, and the whole country felt the beneficial effects to the remotest village of our wide spread confederacy.

We cannot, even at the risk of appearing fanciful, refrain from quoting an appropriate stanza from the productions of a native poet, which, though poetry, is not fiction, and though warmly coloured by a vivid imagination, is a faithful detail of facts. Speaking of the union of the lakes with the ocean at the opening of the Erie canal : " The sire of ocean takes A sylvan maiden to his arms, The goddess of the crystal lakes, In all her native charms. She comes attended by a sparkling train, The naiads of the west her nuptials grace, She meets the sceptred Father of the main, And in his heaving bosom hides her virgin face." The capabilities of every spot were considered and measured by their productive results. No mind or body was idle ; every one laboured to increase his individual means, and thus directly added to the resources of the nation.

The bosom of the earth poured forth its abundance in proportion to the extent of com merce, and the demands of the manufacturing interest. The sables of the ancients became truths to us. They represented the earth to be filled with hidden treasures, which it was the high ADDRESS. 13 prerogative of genius and untiring perseverance only to obtain. We realize this fiction in the value which labour, guided by intelligence, imparts at the present day to the vilest substances, and most unpromising materials. The iron consumed every year, exceeds tenfold in value the precious metals produced by all the mines in the world. The ancients considered that a favoured land, where Ceres lived in harmony with Pluto ; meaning, doubt less, that there exists an intimate connection between all the pur suits of life, when efficiently followed out ; and where each mem ber of a community labours in behalf of himself, in the benefit conferred on his neighbour.

It has been a part of the creed of some political economists, both here and in Europe, that it would be best for us as a nation, to remain, for an indefinite time to come, agriculturists, and suffer other nations to come and take the productions of our soil in exchange for their own manufactures. But this dogma, though enunciated so emphatically from the high places of science in Europe, and echoed by some otherwise sound politicians and true patriots among us, has been gradually losing ground, and has for supporters at the present day, few besides those who are so evidently under the influence of interested motives, that their arguments must appear vitiated to every impartial mind : and further more, if ever so plausibly maintained, they would fall to the ground from the fact that the genius of the people has never, from the commencement of the controversy, been in accordance with them.

The nation, almost without any regular process of reasoning, but guided by an instinctive impulse, came to the con clusion that its labour, divided among the three great interests, was infinitely more productive than if confined to one alone ; and nothing could prevent it from furnishing its own merchants, not only for the supply of domestic, but also of every foreign com modity. Feeling an innate consciousness that no labour was too great, nor enterprise too arduous, they set forth upon untried ADDRESS. 14 voyages, and cut with daring keels unknown oceans, with the same hardihood that impelled them to pierce unexplored forests, and tame the howling wilderness. The sylvan nursery philosophy did not suit the high-toned feelings of our people, and with an impetuous rush they trod this Arcadian theory under foot.

They saw that the little island, from which a goodly proportion of our ancestors came, had arisen from a speck in the ocean to the empire of its tides ; and that now no longer the obscure spot on the outskirts of Europe, the " Ultimos orbe Britannos," of the Romans, it directs the fate of nations who at first were dazzled by the display of its wealth, and awed by the eloquence of its cannon. With such an ancestral example, they would not remain contented with the character of tillers of the earth, how ever eloquently some Utopian enthusiasts might declaim upon the purity of a primitive people, and the contaminating effects of commerce and manufactures. They might read an hundred times the lamentations of the muse over the decay of villages, and the rise of populous cities ; but, however the feelings might be inter ested, and the fancy warmed by the elegance of the style of such effusions, their arguments failed to convince the reason.

Their pines had no sacred character which prevented them from being hewn down and fashioned into masts and spars. Nor were their oaks consecrated by any mistletoe to deter them from uprooting the monarch of the forest. A sober, business spirit is abroad, and neither Fauns nor Dryads can protect the grove when it is wanted for the saw or axe. It must fall if utility require the sacrifice. If any there be who mourn over these changes, we are not among them. The great branches of our national industry will constantly go on, destroying and recombining the elements of productiveness, till every atom is made to bear its ADDRESS. 15 greatest amount of value, and the wildest speculations of the theorist are more than equalled by the reality. It has not for years been difficult to discern the signs of the times.

The watchword has been " onward !" and wonders exceeding the prodigies of ancient times have been the result. For the seven of olden time we can show an hundred, and these are but the earnest of our future achievements. How many dis tinguished individuals who have passed away, and like the pro phets and kings of the Psalmist, have " died without the sight;" how many of our now deceased patriots, who saw with a super human prescience the rising glories of the western world at the period of its greatest gloom and adversity, have lamented that it was their lot to live when they did, and that it was not permitted them to antedate their existence, and behold the fruit of the garden they had planted, and fostered with their treasures and their blood ! If such were their regrets, how great should be our exultation that Providence has cast our lines in such pleasant places, in such auspicious times, that to us it has been given to view the consummation of that national greatness and prosperity so confidently foretold ; and that we see with our mortal eyes the development of that magnificent drama thus glowingly announced by a gifted mind : " Westward the star of empire takes its way The first four acts already past, The fifth shall close the drama with the day ; Time's noblest offspring is the last !"

If this hasty sketch of our possessions, prospects, and resources, be not overdrawn, — and we feel confident that it is not, — surely it will not be out of place to pause a moment in our onward career, and inquire what we have done as a nation to add to the accu- ADDRESS. 16 mulated stock of knowledge contributed by other nations for our benefit as well as for their own. The inquiry is brief, and the answer is at hand. By us no step has been taken to add even to the science of navigation. The great improvements in mathe matical instruments, which have made the path of the mariner in the darkest night, and amid rushing tempests, as easy to be ascertained and followed as a paved street in a populous city, — these improvements, of which we daily and hourly reap the advantage, were brought to light by the liberality of foreign governments, and we still continue to sail by charts we have had no hand in making.

Bowditch, the Blunts, and a few others, have done somewhat in aid of navigation, — much, indeed, for individuals ; but our government, from which alone any extended and efficient assistance can proceed, has done absolutely nothing. Perhaps the present lauda ble labours in perfecting a survey of our own coast, should exempt it in some measure from this unqualified censure ; but when we reflect that this measure was recommended during the administra tion of Jefferson, and though urged and reurged for a long suc cession of years, has only a short time since been taken in hand, we think ourselves justified in affirming that much of the merit we might be disposed to assume has been neutralized by this pro longed and inexcusable delay. Thus it is that we are at this eleventh hour of the day employed in obtaining an accurate knowl edge of our own coasts, when we are the second if not the first commercial nation, and have more tonnage than all the nations of Europe when Columbus discovered this continent, and when our navy, small as it appears in point of numbers, has more effective force than the combined fleets of the old world at that period.

What other nations have accomplished is everywhere to be seen ; in books, maps, charts, and in the collections of our com mercial libraries. Even Spain, while guided by her exclusive interests, and burdened with destructive monopolies, while her ADDRESS. 17 power was respected in the east and extending in the west, made many contributions to geographical knowledge in the construction of numerous charts, characterized by great accuracy. Indeed, to give a history of discovery is to sketch a living picture of the universe, the great outlines of which have been progressively drawn, and many advances made in filling up and imparting the lights and shades to the picture. The Italians and Portuguese, equally adventurous, but far bet ter informed, ventured boldly upon the high seas, and made many important discoveries.

The Danes and Norwegians, undeterred by the cheerless aspect of the Arctic regions, pushed into the north, and planted colonies upon the ice-girt shores of Greenland. On every side the barriers of prejudice were trodden down. The temperate zones were no longer deemed the only habitable por tion of the globe. The torrid zone, instead of enclosing sandy deserts, scorched up by the intolerable heat of a vertical sun, was found to teem with organic life, and to possess a population even more dense than that of the temperate zones, together with a soil equally well adapted to the support of animal and vegetable life. The frigid zones were no longer begirt with perpetual snows, where nature, as if to amuse herself in the loneliness of her soli tude, exhibited the wildest and most fantastic forms.

Navigators advanced toward the north, and found that during the partial summer, plants grew, flowers bloomed, and that human beings made it their permanent residence and home throughout the year. For a long time, however, after Galileo had taught the sublime doctrine that the earth was not an immense plain, bounded by the horizon, which itself was inclosed by some impassable barrier; and that the eighty millions of fixed stars which are visible through a good telescope, were centres of other systems, and not mere ignes fatui, created from inflammable vapours, lighted up each night by the hands of some kind deity; — yes, for a long time subsequent to this discovery, the knowledge of the most enlight- ADDRESS. 18 ened nations was confined within the circumference of a few thousand miles in extent.

At length Columbus taught the world the pathway to a new hemisphere ; and other voyagers, at various successive periods, discovered New Holland, New Zealand, and the numerous groups of islands throughout the Indian, Pacific, and Southern oceans. With these discoveries commences the era of modern geography. The very existence of the Pacific ocean was unknown to Euro peans until 1513, when Balboa, a Spanish commander, guided by some natives, crossed the dividing ridge of the Andes at the Isthmus of Darien. It was now an important desideratum to open a passage by sea to this unexplored ocean, and thence by a new route to arrive at the Moluccas, and the East Indian possessions of the Spanish crown. It was for this purpose that Ma gellan set out upon his memorable voyage, for which he was fitted out by the Emperor Charles V. The results of this expe dition proved him well suited for the prosecution of so bold a design.