among magnificent blocks of merchantmen and mansions of merchant princes, the camping ground of those Indians, would be to thousands in Chicago as a story of Sindbad the Sailor, or as an interlined and dubious chronicle of Alfred the Great, or of one of the early Henrys. No wonder that Gladstone said of the United States in their growth that "America is passing us by in a canter."

Mention has been made of the first teacher in Chicago, with his one pupil and text-book. That was in 1810. A more formal yet private school followed in 1816. Immediately following the Black Hawk war, in 1832, another school was opened in a building twelve feet square, once a stable, with "old store boxes for benches and desks." In the first quarter Mr. Watkins, the proprietor, had twelve pupils; "only four of them were white; the others were quarter, half, and three-quarter Indians." Billy Caldwell, the Pottawatomie chief, offered to pay for tuition, books, and clothing of so many Indian children in the school as would adopt the dress of civilization, but not one accepted his offer. The dress was the obstacle. About this time a Miss Chappel left her school at Mackinaw, and opened one in Chicago, with a Miss Mary Barrows as assistant. At last accounts Miss Chappel, as Mrs. Jeremiah Porter, was teaching at Fort Sill in the Indian Territory.

Two years afterward, Mr. G. T. Sproat, from Boston, opened an English and Classical school, and a recent letter from one of his assistants gives a good idea of Chicago at that time-1834. "I used to go across without regard to streets. It was not uncommon in going to and from school to see prairie wolves, and we could hear them howl any time in the day. We were frequently annoyed by Indians, but the great difficulty we had to encounter was mud. No person now can have a just idea of what Chicago mud used to be. Rubbers were of no account. I purchased a pair of gentlemen's brogans and fastened them tight about the ankle, but would still go over them in mud and water, and was obliged to have a pair of men's boots made."

It will give a tolerable idea of the growth of settlement to-day going on, a thousand miles or two beyond Chicago, in log houses and mud towns, among Indians and prairie wolves, if we notice what changes fifty years have wrought around Fort Dearborn and Wolf Point. In 1882 the Kinzie boy, with his spelling-book from the tea-chest, would find 110,466 schoolmates, as those of legal school age in Chicago. Of these he would notice that 32,038 were attending private schools, as was he in 1810. Master Robbie Forsyth, the teacher, thirteen years old, would find himself in competition with 1,019 public school-teachers. When Miss Warren drew on

VOL. XIII.-No. 4.-25

gentlemen's boots and went wading back and forth cross lots, the primitive order does not seem to have reached Chicago: "Let the dry land appear; but the work of creation has since been completed there, and Chicago has ceased to be amphibian.

In setting forth Ancient, Chicago, we made its first human habitation our resting-place and our study; and now, in conclusion, let us go back to its threshold to take farewell.

It is the first house built in Chicago, and by De Saible, a Domingoan, in 1779. Monarch of all he surveys from its low door-way, and solitary for seventeen years, he sells out to Le Mai, who keeps it open to Indians and furs for eight years, when John Kinzie buys him out in 1804, the first American in the town, though born in Quebec. Kinzie still keeps it as a place for Indian barter till the massacre of 1812. Then for four years it stands open and vacant for the winds and the wild animals, till the owner cautiously and sadly returns. All about and in sight from its forsaken door-way are the ghastly remains of the massacre. Here the first white child is born in the city of to-day, and in 1823 becomes, under the same roof, the first bride. Of all the joyous weddings in that now populous city, the first was within those log walls; and the same year its occupant, as probably the first justice of the county, held the first court in Chicago under its roof. Four years later it was vacated by Justice Kinzie, who moved across the river to a little house under the walls of the Fort, where he died in 1828. In 1831 it was occupied by Bailey, as the first postmaster in that prophetic town; probably thus early on its floor the basket of mail matter was emptied, and later its walls were decorated with those boot letter-boxes by his successor and son-in-law, Hogan. It was easy of access, thirty rods from the lake, on the north bank of the river and opposite the Fort, with a canoe or skiff or pirogue ferry between, free to any one who could handle paddle or oar, and half a mile or so down the river from Wolf Point. The bridges and draws, innumerable and intolerable, were yet to come. After 1832,

says Andreas, "there is no record of its being inhabited. Its decaying logs were used by the Indians and emigrants for fuel, and the drifting sands of Lake Michigan were piled over its remains. No one knows when it finally disappeared."

H. Barrows

JEFFERSON AS A NATURALIST

If the words with which La Bruyère began his famous book were ever true of any subject, one might be pardoned for thinking that of Thomas Jefferson, at least, "everything has been said." Few, outside the purely literary class, have left behind them so large a collection of writings from which each student may form his own estimate of the man; and few, if any, Americans have attracted so many biographers. The hero-worship that began with the publication of a "Life" by Prof. Tucker in 1837 has been continued by sufficiently many later writers, the relatives and partisans of Mr. Jefferson; while the diatribe poured forth in 1839 by Theodore Dwight has also found its numerous successors. Finally, the admirable work, but recently written by John T. Morse, Jr., weaving together, as it does, whatever of truth can be found scattered along these two lines of biography, seems to give a portraiture so essentially just, that nothing more need be said.

But is it quite so? All who have written of the "Author of the Declaration" have, of course, dwelt chiefly on his public services and political doctrines. But those who have familiarized themselves with Jefferson's writings, more especially his voluminous correspondence, need not to be told that, aside from his natural aptitude for statesmanship and political theorizing, he had a marked predilection for the study of science. One biographer, indeed, has even ventured to assert that if circumstances had not drawn him into public life, he would probably have been a professional scientist. Others, while very justly denying this, have not failed, when making any pretensions to complete biography, to call attention to the scientific side of his character, although the nature of their purpose forbade their putting any particular emphasis upon this point. The object of the present paper is to attempt to bring out in brighter colors and more prominent lines a minor, but not uninteresting, portion of the general picture. At this late day any addition of biographical material is not, perhaps, to be expected, but it is believed that a brief consideration of Jefferson as a naturalist will prove not wholly unprofitable; because one will thus get a view of an always interesting character from a new angle, and more especially because it will show what a crude state of development the natural sciences were in, less than a century ago.

His more or less practical knowledge of surgical anatomy, civil engineer

ing, physics, mechanics, meteorology and astronomy might be sufficiently, and even tediously, shown by copious quotations from his writings. During his five years' residence in Paris as American Minister he was in constant correspondence with Rittenhouse and all the eminent scientists on this side the ocean, and he kept no less than four colleges-Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and the College of Philadelphia-informed of whatever discoveries and inventions were made known in the scientific circles of Europe. But perhaps the versatility of the man is best illustrated by an incident that occurred later in life. Stopping one night at a Virginia inn, he passed several hours in conversation with a fellow-guest, who had indeed heard of the great statesman, but did not recognize him on that occasion. After Mr. Jefferson retired, his companion of the evening eagerly asked the landlord who it was with whom he had been conversing. "For," said he, "when he spoke of law, I thought he was a lawyer; when he spoke of mechanics, I was confident he was an engineer; when he referred to medicine, I had no doubt he was a physician; and when he discussed theology, I was convinced he was a clergyman." The inquirer was, of course, greatly surprised to learn that the gentleman of such many-sided activity was one whom he had always known as a politician.

But while thus at home in many departments of pure and applied science, it was in natural history that he was most interested, and as a naturalist he made his only original contributions to scientific knowledge. The reason for it is not far to seek; it was the combined result of heredity and early training. His maternal grandfather, Isham Randolph, was a man more than ordinarily learned in the science of botany-at least for those times as is sufficiently proved by the kindly words written of him by his friend, John Bartram, who founded the first botanic garden in America, and whom Linnæus called the ablest natural botanist in the world. From this ancestor Jefferson inherited his strong sympathy with living nature; and the hereditary tendency was easily strengthened by the peculiar circumstances of his education. Of his early instructors the one who put the firmest stamp on the forming mind was Dr. Small, of Scotland, whose daily intimacy with his young pupil seems to have been much closer than is usual in such relations. The widely diversified knowledge which Scotch universities give their graduates has often been remarked, and of this diversity Dr. Small had his full share; so that, although a professor of mathematics, he lost no opportunity of giving instruction to his youthful friend in all branches of natural science. That he was well qualified to inspire in young Jefferson a vigorous love for nature and the study of natural phenomena one might readily infer, even without other evidence, from his

intimacy, during a subsequent residence in England, with the once famous Erasmus Darwin.

This taste for scientific study, derived as we have seen from two sources, Jefferson himself has frequently spoken of in his correspondence. Writing to M. Dupont de Nemours, he says: "Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight;' again, to T. M. Randolph, Jr., speaking of the pleasures of a naturalist's life, he writes [July 6, 1787], “"Circumstances have thrown me into a very different kind of life, and not choice;" and again in a letter [March 7, 1791] replying to Mr. Innes, he says, "Your first gives me information in the line of natural history, and the second promises political news. The first is my passion, the last my duty, and therefore both desirable."

In following the course of his life the first evidence of his acquirements in natural science that we reach is in the "Notes on Virginia," written in 1781-82. The amount of erudition and practical scientific knowledge displayed in that work would be considered surprisingly large for any American of that day, even if he had devoted a long life to special researches. But Mr. Jefferson was then a comparatively young man, and his life up to that date had been far too busy for the prosecution of special study in science. As a student he devoted fifteen hours a day to studies. bearing directly on the profession of law, and his hours of recreation were fully occupied, as we know, with the dances in the Apollo and the many festivities of Virginia's hospitable homes; while, during the Revolutionary period, his hand and head were constantly employed in the service of his State and nation. But somehow during those years, so crowded with events, he had acquired nearly all the knowledge the world then possessed of geology and zoology. Buffon, Daubenton, Zimmerman, Blumenbach, Linnæus, Kalm, Catesby and Cuvier, were among those with whose works he was familiar. Nor was his knowledge of books alone; he had, for those times, a very fair knowledge of the geological formation of his native State, and as an authority on the animal life of North America he was then probably without any superior. Many of the theories advanced in the "Notes on Virginia" modern science has long since rejected; but in some of his conclusions Mr. Jefferson was quite in advance of the best specialists of the age, and notably so in the department of paleontology.

When the "Notes" were written, and indeed for many years thereafter, palæontology had no real existence as a science. The petrifactions discovered in the earth's strata had indeed from the earliest times attracted the attention of the wisest thinkers, but no complete theory of their origin had yet been sufficiently demonstrated to secure general acceptance.