ors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word
has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the
sea.

"These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and
useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of
1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind,
and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at
sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were
made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every
ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds,
currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings,
etc., while every maritime nation of the world cooeperated in a work that
was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase
of knowledge, the good of all.

"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called
the celebrated Brussels Conference for the cooeperation of nations in
matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury
advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to
the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he
urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present
Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his
perception and advocacy."

Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work by which he is best
known, was published in 1855. He discovered, among other things, the
causes of the Gulf Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau
of the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of the first cable.
Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to Maury's work in this connection:
"Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the
work."

Maury was decorated by many foreign governments but not by his own.
Owing, it is said, to his having taken up the Confederate cause,
national honors were withheld from him, not only during the remainder of
his life, but until 1916, when one of the large buildings at the Naval
Academy--the establishment of which, by the way, Maury was one of the
first to advocate--was named for him, and Congress passed a bill
appropriating funds for the erection of a monument to the "Pathfinder of
the Sea," in Washington.

Maury died in 1873, one of the most loved and honored men in the State
of Virginia.

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