the old sailing frigate Potomac (forty-four), but later on in the new steam-frigate Wa| bash-a beautiful vessel, of great power for that day, carrying forty of the new Dahlgren cannon, and over seven hundred men.

Paulding, now in his fifty-eighth year, bad reached the goal of his professional hopes, and many anecdotes are related of the ability and dignity of his administration of the affairs of this squadron at a most eventful period. The Captain-General of Cuba declared he was the most distinguished naval officer in bearing that he had ever seen in the port of Havana, and indeed he deserved the compliment. Of stalwart frame and commanding presence, he combined with dignity of mien and courtliness of address the greater dignity of intellect, and, though a strict disciplinarian, a kindly, benevolent manner irresistibly attractive to all seamen who ever came in contact with him. His officers and men universally admired and

uneventful. For two years he served in the Mediterranean as first lieutenant of the frigate Constellation, and in the same waters commanded the schooner Shark, of twelve guns, from 1834 to 1837. In February, 1837, he reached the rank of commander, and for three years commanded the Levant, on the West India station. In 1841, for the first time in thirty years' service, we find him on "shore duty," as executive officer of the New York Navy-yard, under Commodore James Renshaw. In 1844 he reached the rank of captain, and was sent to the East Indies in command of the Vincennes, of twenty guus. This cruise lasted three years, and proved the most dismal of his life, for while in China that dire scourge, the dysentery, broke out among the crew, and a very large proportion of the ship's company succumbed to its fatal effects. Spared himself, Paulding's humane and generous heart was a constant prey to the keenest emotions, witnessing the agonies he was powerless to relieve. The re-respected him, and though a man of most turn of Commodore Biddle to the United States left him in command of the Asiatic station, a duty he performed, as he had ever performed all his duties, with zeal, discretion, and entire devotion to his country's interests. In 1848, after a brief respite on shore, he was ordered to command the "crack" frigate of the day, the St. Lawrence, of forty-four guns, and sent on a sort of diplomatic cruise to the north of Europe. This was to him probably the most interesting cruise of his life, for the French revolution had set all Europe in commotion, and the agitation for liberty extended to its remotest

corners.

positive views and character, it is not known that in a long professional career of sixtyseven years he ever had a single personal enemy in the service. His popularity with the men was once amusingly illustrated during the odious régime of flogging. Said an old sailor (afterward a boatswain famous for his seamanship and incorrigible habit of intemperance), "I would rather have the old man' [meaning Paulding] lick me any day than get a first-class 'billet' from any other man."

For

But the command of the home squadron was no sinecure. On the 8th of December, 1857, he arrested Walker the filibuster, with all his men, at Greytown, in Nicaragua, and sent him to the United States for trial. this praiseworthy maintenance of treaty obligations and neutrality laws he was promptly relieved from his command by President Buchanan, who hastened in a special message to Congress to disavow all complicity in Paulding's resolute act! The Ostend Manifesto had borne its legitimate fruit, and the Knights of the Golden Circle had no mind for any such doings as the arrest of their agent Walker. Commodore Paulding went into retirement with the sympathy of millions of his fellow-citizens, while the republic of Nicaragua, whose soil it was pretended he had violated, hastened to tender him its thanks, a large tract of very valuable land, and a magnificent jewelled sword, which last, Congress, in 1861, allowed

Our government was desirons of aiding the Germanic Confederation to establish a navy, and while at Bremerhaven several young Prussians were received on board of the St. Lawrence to be instructed in nautical science. Captain Paulding was invited by the late King of Prussia to visit Berlin, and was handsomely entertained at the royal palace. Accompanying Prince Adalbert, the Admiral of Germany, to Frankfort-onthe-Main, he was presented to the members of the German Parliament, who received him with great enthusiasm, and tendered him a high command in the German service, which he politely declined. It is not at all improbable that the German navy of to-day owes much of its efficiency to the ideas instilled by this American sailor into the mind of Prince Adalbert, who was an intelligent and progressive man. Captain Paulding re-him to accept. turned home in 1851 to command the Wash- At the period of his relief Commodore ington Navy-yard, where he remained three | Paulding had commanded the squadron years, upon the conclusion of which service he reached the highest naval position in the gift of his country, being appointed by the President to command the West India, or home squadron.

nearly three years, but for the remainder of President Buchanan's term he was utterly ignored. He bore it all very patiently, sustained by the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and bided his time. Great His broad pennant was at first hoisted on events were now hastening, and the flames

of civil war soon spread far and wide. The scuttling of the fine steam-frigate Merrimac first naval officer sent for by President Lin- and other vessels even before Commodore coln was Hiram Paulding, who was detailed Paulding had reached Fortress Monroe from to assist Secretary Welles in the Navy De- Washington. This reduced affairs to such partment. His loyalty and devotion to his a condition that the abandonment of the flag were every where known, and while yard became a necessity, the government traitors and trimmers were numerous even not having the requisite force to hold it, and in the navy, his voice, at least, gave out no the destruction of the public property foluncertain sound, for it summoned his com-lowed, as a consequence of the written orders rades to the impending conflict for national under which Commodore Paulding was actunity and equal rights to all men under the ing. His conduct received the entire apflag. The noble old man who in his boy-proval of President Lincoln and Secretary hood had seen the proud cross of St. George Welles, who fully realized the stern necessilowered to the Stars and Stripes amid the ty which prompted his course, it being imsmoke and din of desperate battle, was not possible at that time to spare the steamer one to willingly allow a single star to fade Pawnee for the defense of Norfolk, the nafrom the union of the glorious old banner tional capital being itself in serious jeopunder which he had fought: so he reasoned ardy. with his life-long friend Commodore Tattnall, at heart a Union man. The two men had grown gray together in the navy, had become devoted friends in early life, had named their children after each other, and now, alas! they were to part and turn their swords against each other's breast. Tatt-after this he was ordered to command the nall, a man of chivalric impulses, is said to have shed bitter tears at this interview with his old comrade, and yet, though no sympathizer with secession, no persuasions, entreaties, or remonstrances on the part of Paulding could turn him from his inflexible resolve to cast his fortunes with his native State.

Years after, when the war had ended, the writer was present at an accidental meeting of the two men in New York city. "Why, Joe, you dear old rebel, how are you?" said Paulding, clapping the ex-Confederate on the shoulder with a force fit to fell an ox; and thereupon he took the broken-hearted old man to his beautiful home on the shores of Long Island Sound, where he entertained him many days, the sad chapter of the civil war being never once alluded to. Paulding's generous forgetfulness of the past was not lost on the brave sailor who at the disastrous repulse of the British on the Peiho, in China, declared blood to be "thicker than water;" and the two men parted firmer friends than ever, never again to meet on earth, for shortly afterward Commodore Tattnall died.

In September, 1861, Commodore Paulding served as a member of the board to examine the plaus of iron-cased vessels, and its report is memorable as having recommended the building of the Monitor-a creation of the wonderful genius of Ericsson. Shortly

It was

New York Navy-yard, the most important
station the government possessed. His du-
ties here were arduous to a degree; but
although in his sixty-fifth year, and techuic-
ally "retired," he served in this trying com-
mand during the entire civil war, infusing
energy into his subordinates, and sending to
the scenes of battle and blockade hundreds
of vessels and thousands of men.
entirely due to his foresight that the Moni-
tor was so speedily equipped for service, and
a telegram received on the night of March
5, 1862, countermanding her orders to For-
tress Monroe, and instructing Captain Wor-
den to lose no time in proceeding with his
vessel direct to Washington after passing
the capes, was withheld by Commodore
Paulding, who had private advices of the
danger of longer delay in the dispatch of
this vessel to Hampton Roads. This en-
abled the vessel to confront the Merrimac on
the 9th of March, and thus end her career
of destruction.

In July, 1862, the grade of rear-admiral was created for the first time in American history, and President Lincoln directed by the act to appoint ten of the most distinAmong the many onerous duties devolv-guished retired officers to that grade. Hiing on Commodore Paulding in 1861 was that most disagreeable task, the destruction of the Norfolk Navy-yard.

ram Paulding was one of the ten so appointed, and, having survived all his comrades, was, at the time of his death, the oldest admiral in the navy.

When the memorable draft riots broke out in New York city in July, 1863, the safety of the most valuable portion of the town from confusion and pillage was largely due to the energy and foresight of this veteran

This affair, which has been much criticised by some persons unfamiliar with all the facts, and by some military men who kept well to the rear in the dark days of April, 1861, was, under the circumstances in which Commodore Paulding found the yard on April 20, a necessity, painful but un-officer, who, not content with causing gunavoidable. Vacillation on the part of the commandant and treason or indifference on the part of his subordinates had led to the

boats to patrol the rivers, dispatched within two hours a naval battalion of seamen and marines to report to General Wool for duty,

D

AT THE MOUTH OF THE AMAZONS. I.-ISLE OF MARAJÚ. URING the last twenty-five years much has been written concerning the valley of the Amazons. Wallace, Bates, Agassiz, Orton, and many other scientific men of note have spent years there, without seeing, however, more than a small portion of that world of water and verdure. For a long time to come these regions will be still new, and each fresh traveller's experiences will bear the character of novelty.

Knowing that all the great rivers of the world-the Mississippi, the Gauges, the Danube, the Nile, and others-open into the ocean by immense deltas, geographers and naturalists, though wondering that the greatest river of them all, the Amazons, should form an exception, have agreed to accept the conclusion that the fresh-water king has no delta. After many an excursion through the immense archipelago which obstructs the opening of the Amazons I have come to quite a different conclusion.

ther to the eastward than it now does." Strange as it may seem, Professor Agassiz, while maintaining that "the sea is eating away the land much faster than the river can build it up," ignored the possibility that this delta, the asserted absence of which so sorely puzzles geographers, might have been washed away in great part, and that the immense archipelago at the opening of the Amazons should be considered as the remains thereof. Old canals and swamps have been filling and new ones forming every day. In the wet season the islands, however numerous they may have previously been, are divided into many smaller ones by a network of channels tenfold more complex than during the dry season. They have an alluvial formation. The reticulation of the Amazonian delta is not circumscribed by the two main branches of the river--that is, by the Amazons proper and the Pará River-but by means of rivers, lakes, streamlets, and channels it extends from the mouth Professor Agassiz considered the island of the river Xingu as far down the southof Marajó as originally a continuation of the eastern coast of Brazil as Maranham. The valley of the Amazons, believing he recog-northern part of the province of Pará, durnized in it the geological structure of the ing the wet season, is naught but a vast latter in all its details. He supposed that swamp intersected by channels more numerthe island of Marajó had been, at some date, ous than those which reticulate the delta "an integral part of the glacial deposits of the Nile. Two boats were dispatched to that formed the whole valley," and at a later Salinas last March from the steamer Richperiod became an island in the bed of the mond in search of a pilot. They were missriver, which, dividing into two arms, encir- ing several days, and at last given up as cled it completely; and then, joining again wrecked among the breakers of the dreadin a single stream, flowed onward to the sea-ful Salinas Bay; but later on they made shore, "which in those days lay much far- their appearance at Pará, after rowing many