“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.

It is recorded that, near the end, he asked his son:  “Am I dragging my anchors?”

And when the latter replied in the affirmative, the father gave a brave sailor’s answer: 

“All’s well,” he said.

* * * * *

Across the river from Fredericksburg stands Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, one of the most charming of early Virginian mansions.  Chatham was built in 1728, and it is thought that the plans for it were drawn by Sir Christopher Wren at the order of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and sent by the latter to William Fitzhugh, who had been his classmate at Eton and Oxford.  Not only does the name of the house lend color to the tale, but so do its proportions, which are very beautiful, reminding one somewhat of those of Doughoregan Manor.  Chatham, however, has the advantage of being (as the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray wrote of it in his quaint “Travels in North America,” published in 1839) “situated on an eminence commanding a view of the town, and of the bold, sweeping course of the Rappahannoc.”  Murray also tells of the beautiful garden, with its great box trees and its huge slave-built terraces, stepping down to the water like a giant’s stairway.

In this house my companion and I were guests, and as I won the toss for the choice of rooms, mine was the privilege of sleeping in the historic west bedchamber, the principal guest room, and of opening my eyes, in the morning, upon a lovely wall all paneled in white-painted wood.