and the differences to be determined are the quantities either of talent or of diligence which have been applied in their acquirement. But in a work like the Survey of the Coast, prosecuted in various localities, a simple reconnaissance, requiring in one place more skill and time and labor than a triangulation in another. The qualities of the atmosphere, in some places reasonably transparent, and in others almost constantly impervious by fog and vapor, aiding or retarding the exertions of the most skilful operator, and the means both of subsistence and of transportation varying in a still more unequal proportion, it were the height either of folly or imposture to presume that equal means and equal appliances would produce equal results. Yet such was the standard assumed by the superintendent as an estimate of the quantity of work done by each of the parties, and of the relative merits of the chiefs who had directed their operations. In his reports to the department, the number of observations made, the number of square miles covered, either by reconnaissance, triangulation, topography, or sounding, are all that are presented for consideration, no regard being had either to health, climate, or the character of the season.* This use of mere quantity is a favorite arithmetical process, used chiefly by retired school-masters. It is an exhibition to advantage of the cumulative power of numbers, and delights in solving such problems as to determine the length, in inches, of cotton thread, which would encircle the globe, or how many loaves of bread a man must eat in seventy years; but is too gross and unmeaning to be applied in any case, even of common importance. It was not, however, used unwittingly by the Superintendent of the Coast Survey. He seems to have had a full sense of its value, and of the purposes which it might be made to subserve. Under this estimation of character, when an assistant became obnoxious, it was merely necessary to send him to a bad atmosphere, with an indifferent or defective apparatus, and the monthly report would be taken as evidence against him, furnished by himself. This plan of operation was made fatal to one of the assistants, in 1846, and severely affected another in the succeeding year. But if this application of the numerical theory to the work of the assistants has been productive of important results both to them and to the superintendent, there is another application of the same kind, which is of as much importance to the public. In the first report of the superintendent, it was stated that operations in the past year had been carried on in nine different States, and that they would be extended in the year then current, to three or four others.-(Page 3 of the Report of 1844.) They have been further extended in each successive year, till now they * The value attached to this numerical estimate will be sufficiently evident by the following extract from the Coast Survey article in the American Almanac for 1849, page 71: The amount of results now obtained is double that under the former plan, for an increase of 50 per cent in the cost." This assistant presented journals containing 15,800 readings of an instrument, among which were detected twenty-six misreadings, of one minute. He presented, from these premises, 1,900 results, of which he had rejected thirty-seven. The number of misreadings of one minute (an error usual in such observations) would, in ordinary cases, have been noted only for its paucity. Nevertheless, these defects were quite sufficient to answer the purpose of the superintendent. The assistant was unceremoniously removed, after a long term, (near thirty years of public service,) and at a time of life when this deprivation involved almost certain ruin. embrace eighteen States; and we are informed, in the paper on the Coast Survey in the American Almanac, that this coming year the whole of the Atlantic coast will be occupied by detached parties of the Survey of the Coast.-(Vide American Almanac, p. 77.) And we learn, from another unprinted authority, that similar parties have been already sent to Mexico and California. This imposing array of States, exhibited as new centres of operation, is as false a use of figures as can anywhere be found. It is intended to mislead the public as to the quantity of work actually done, by enumerating a long list of places, in which a sextant may have been uncovered, or a lead thrown; and its only tendency upon the interest of the Survey has been to increase the official patronage of the superintendent on the one hand, and distract and render it unproductive on the other. To strip the statements of the superintendent of their fallacy, it is only necessary to state, that in six of the nine States enumerated in the first report of the superintendent, the Survey might be considered as completed, before his superintendence began; while the work done in the nine additional States, during the five years which he has been in the office, may be stated as follows: In Massachusetts, the triangulation of Mr. Borden has been repeated, this being almost the only field-work in which the superintendent has been engaged. Of this we have already spoken as an operation, the necessity of which might well be questioned at any time; but when seveneighths of the more dangerous coast is yet unsurveyed, and the only reason for undertaking this portion of the Survey at present seems to be the personal convenience of the superintendent, it assumes a much more excep. tionable character. In addition, the Survey of the Chesapeake has been continued southward to below the mouth of the Potomac. The Albemarle and Croatan Sounds have been triangulated, (without a base,) and the topography partially finished. The Mississippi Sound, from Pascagoula to Mobile, has been partially surveyed, and a triangulation and sounding has been commenced in Mobile Bay. Of the reconnaissances made in South Carolina and Texas, little need be said, as they were undertaken merely ad captandum; and the expense of the operations, as nearly as can be judged from the report of the superintendent, has only been about $7,000. If the five years' work of the present superintendent, with a personnel at least twice as large as the largest ever employed under the previous superintendence-an appropriation more than eight times greater than that with which the work began, and nearly twice as large as that with which the former superintendence closed-and with vessels and equipages furnished by the Revenue Bureau of the Treasury Department to the amount of $240,000-be compared with the eleven years' work done by his predecessor, it will be seen, even using the superintendent arithmetical process, that there is but little difference in the proportional quantities of work done. I exclude from this all comparison of the area of the primary triangulation. The reoccupation of Borden's triangulation put the superintendent at once in the possession of triangles, with sides of from eighteen to seventy miles in length; and superficial square miles by the thousand were covered with more ease than hundreds in any other portion of the Survey. In the meantime, the outer and more dangerous coast, from Cape Henlopen to Cape Charles, (upon which, a short time since, a vessel of war was nearly wrecked,) has not been touched. The still more dangerous coast about Cape Hatteras, for the accurate survey of which the work in North Carolina was first commenced, has been altogether neglected.* And while a reconnaissance of the coast of Texas figures largely in the annual report of the superintendent, the geographical position of Galveston Bay is known to be uncertain, to an extent alike shameful and dangerous. But to arrive more conclusively at the relative expenses and work done under the two superintendences, and also circumscribe somewhat the extent of the paper, which has already exceeded the limits which were designed for it, we may refer to the following statistics, which are based either upon documents, or information acquired directly from authentic sources. And in making any comparison, it must be recollected that the term of Mr. Hassler's superintendence should be reckoned only at eleven years, excluding altogether the year 1817, the operation of that year having tended actually to retard, and not to advance the work; while that of Dr. Bache's (up to the term of his last report) may be reckoned at about four years. The expenses of the two terms must be divided into the actual annual appropriations authorized by law, and the amounts furnished to each from other sources. The actual appropriations for Mr. Hassler, exclusive of that for 1817, amounted to $857,549. The appropriations for each individual year have already been enumerated. The appropriations of the same kind, for the four years of Dr. Bache's superintendence, amount to $449,000.† The appropriations derived from other sources must be inferred from the number of vessels furnished by the Revenue Bureau of the Treasury Department, and from the number of officers and men detailed from the naval service. In 1843 the vessels employed in the Hydrography of the Survey were as follows: Brig Washington. | Cutter Nautilus. Schooner Vanderbilt. | Schooner Jersey. To these were attached eighteen naval officers, and about eighty men. The two first-named vessels were (it is believed) furnished by the Navy and Treasury Departments, and may be valued at $27,000. This branch of the Survey having grown gradually from 1834, when it commenced with the schooner Jersey, till it reached the above establishment, the amount of pay and subsistence cannot now be accurately ascertained, but may be set down at $260,000. Under Dr. Bache's superintendence, the following vessels have been employed, with about thirty-two officers, and one hundred and fifty men : The expenses already incurred in the Survey of the interior sounds of North Carolina may be estimated at about $80,000. If this sum had been expended in erecting light-houses, in lieu of the light-boats now used in the sounds, the commercial interest would have been benefitted to a much greater extent than by the survey of the shoal waters of the interior. The light-house system throughout the country is well known to be very imperfect; but in North Carolina it seems to have been neglected altogether. The amount of appropriations from 1843 to 1848 are as follows:-1844, $80,000; 1845, $112,000; 1846, 111,000; 1847, 146,000; total, four years, $449,000; 1848, 165,000. Two other schooners, (names unknown,) making a fleet of 16 sail. F. R. Hassler. Of these vessels, the steamers, the cutter Phoenix, and the schooner Wave have been furnished by the government, and their value may be set down at $240,000. The pay of officers and men, estimated as closely as practicable, for the whole term of four years, will amount to $204,000. The number of civil assistants of all classes, in the last year of Mr. Hassler's superintendence, was twenty-seven, of which three were engravers, and seven artificers and heliotropers.* Under the present head of the Survey, as nearly as can be ascertained, the number is sixty-one, exclusive of those employed temporarily. In arriving at this number, it has been necessary to go farther than the official Register, or Blue Book. But the authority is, nevertheless, authentic, and printed. In examining critically the reports of the superintendent, particularly that for 1847, names enough will appear to make up the number, though excluded from the printed list of the corps. In comparing the work executed under each superintendent, we have but short data on the part of Mr. Hassler. The method so advantageously pursued by his successor, of superficial miles and numbers of observations, made no part of his system. There is, in answer to a question proposed by the Committee of Investigation in 1842, an estimate given of the square miles of primary triangulation from New Haven to Philadelphia, (Doc. 43 of the H. R.) which states it at 3,577. An examination of the maps and sketches, which are either part of his official communications, or can be otherwise obtained, will show that a superficies of about 5,760 miles had been covered with primary triangulation during his superintendence. The superficial miles of primary triangulation made by the present superintendent up to 1847, will, by his estimates, amount to 7,803; of which 6,532 are in the northern triangulation, the principal part of which had been previously executed by Mr. Borden, affording, without any trouble of reconnaissance, sides of from twenty to seventy miles in length, where a single triangle covers more surface than will be found in any other part of the Survey in the work of years. This sort of comparison, instituted with great foresight by the present superintendent, is so manifestly absurd, as to require no other exposition of its fallacy than simply to compare the quantities of the northern and southern portions of his own work. The one is 6,532, and the other 1,271. If, instead of this method of estimating, we compare either the length of the shore-lines of each work, or the surfaces covered by the secondary triangulation, we shall arrive at a safer judgment of the mere matter of quantity, though even then, such an estimate, made without regard to the nature of the country and other circumstances, is entirely useless and uncertain. A large map of the United States is the only document necessary to be referred to. Heliotropers are persons used in managing an instrument called a heliotrope, for signals at distant points. From this it will appear that Mr. Hassler's secondary triangulation, covering the outer coast and shores of Long Island Sound, and extending southward to Cape Henlopen, has an area of 8,100 square miles. During Dr. Bache's superintendence, according to his own estimate, the secondary triangulation amounts to 2,723 square miles. If, leaving these technical and inapplicable methods, we examine merely the respective lengths of outer sea-coast which has been surveyed, it will be seen that, under the first superintendence, there is a length of two hundred and sixty miles, comprehending the dangerous and difficult coast of New Jersey; while that of the present superintendent, extending principally from Buzzard's Bay round Cape Cod, shows only a length of about eighty miles, and that, too, on a part of the coast previously better known than any other of its whole extent. It was wont to be the opinion that bold and rugged coasts were usually the safest, as affording capes and headlands for land-marks, or sites for beacons, warning the mariner of danger, or indicating the approaches to his desired harbor. But at present we are apprehensive, if the "north countrie" continue to excel in the coming years as it has in the past, in luxuries both of learning and living-tourists and tautog-savans and salmon-should its summers be as bracing and its winters as festive as heretofore, there will be no end to the discovery of shoals about its rock-bound but blessed shores; and they will long be considered, by both mariners and hydrographers, as infinitely more dangerous than the sunken and sandy beaches of the South, where the ship strikes before the land has been discovered; and which are, for the greatest part of the year, literally strewed with wrecks. If these data be correct, (and those referring to expense must be very nearly so,) the following summary will show the relation between the economy of the two superintendencies: Mr. Hassler. $857,549 Dr. Bache. $449,000 240,000 204,000 Total....... Average expense of 1 year......... Vessels.......... Civil assistants.. Naval officerst.......... Total........... Primary triangulation....... 27,000 260,000 $1,144,549 *$893,000 According to this, the average annual expense of the first superinten. dence would be less than half that of the other, and the actual amount of work done, estimated by a plain and strictly just rule, would be in favor of Mr. Hassler in about the proportion of six to five; while the increased *The expense of Dr. Bache's superintendence up to the end of this year will be abou $1,112,000. + Officers of the Army have also been, and are now, employed in the Survey. Their number and terms of service has recently been so uncertain that no reference has been made to them. |