This remarkable day

‘The road was alive with ox carts returning from the fields, vendors selling coconuts - signaled by an upright palm frond - and women walking swiftly, balancing heavy loads on their heads. In a vast sugarcane field, a majestic Ceiba pentandra stood in solitary grandeur, a sight I captured in color photography to preserve the memory of this remarkable day.’ This is from a brief diary kept by the Canadian Brother Marie-Victorin on a 1941 field trip to Trinidad and Jamaica. Born 140 years ago today, he earned fame as a botanist, teacher but he was also a member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a Catholic lay congregation.

Conrad Kirouac was born on 3 April 1885, in Kingsey Falls, Quebec, and grew up in a devout Catholic family with a strong appreciation for nature. His early fascination with plants and the natural world was nurtured in the rural landscape of his childhood. At the age of 15, he joined the Brothers of the Christian Schools, adopting the name Marie-Victorin. His formal education took place within the religious order, where he trained as a teacher while continuing to cultivate his passion for botany.

Despite a lack of formal university training in science, Marie-Victorin became one of Canada’s foremost botanists. He taught at Mont-Saint-Louis College in Montreal while conducting independent research on Quebec’s flora. His groundbreaking work culminated in the publication of Flore laurentienne in 1935, a comprehensive study of the plant life of the St. Lawrence Valley that remains an essential reference in Canadian botany. His writing and teaching helped popularise scientific knowledge in French-speaking Canada, bridging the gap between academia and the public.

Marie-Victorin played a key role in establishing the Montreal Botanical Garden, which opened in 1931 under his guidance. He envisioned it as a centre for education, research, and conservation. His efforts secured support from both religious and secular authorities, reflecting his ability to unite diverse communities in the pursuit of scientific and cultural advancement. He was also instrumental in founding the Institut botanique de l’Université de Montréal, further solidifying his legacy in botanical education.

Beyond his scientific contributions, Brother Marie-Victorin was known for his wit, charisma, and ability to inspire students. He balanced his commitment to religious life with a deep curiosity about the natural world, advocating a harmonious relationship between science and faith. Tragically, he died in a car accident in 1944, but his influence endures through his writings, the institutions he helped create, and the continued study of Quebec’s plant life. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopaedia, Canada’s History, or the Kirouac Family Association website.

Between the ages of 18 and 35, Brother Marie-Victorin kept notebooks full of thoughts on religion, education, botany, community life, his vocation, and his reading. The contents of these ten notebooks (over 800 pages) were not published until 2004 when Saint-Laurent brought out Mon miroir: journaux intimes, 1903-1920, as edited by Gilles Beaudet et Lucie Jasmin. During this period, the editors say, ‘we see the emergence of an extraordinary temperament, an exceptional being, an avant-garde spirit who would instil the spark of the Quiet Revolution in pre-war French Canada’. This is available to preview - in the original French - at Googlebooks.

There are also at least two other short journals - in typescript form and in French - kept by Marie-Victorin that are available to view and download at Internet Archive. There is the ‘travelogue’ of Brother Marie-Victorin on a trip to Barranquilla (Colombia), Jamaica, and Trinidad in 1941, ‘courtesy of the Division de la Gestion de Documents et des Archives at the Université de Montréal’. There is a longer document (which includes an English translation) titled Brother Marie-Victorin In Haiti Botany, concerning his first trip to Quisqueya (Hispaniola) 1938-1939. Moreover, in December 2022, the Caribbean Journal of Science included a paper “Out of Cuba” - The Additional Botanical Expeditions of Brother Marie-Victorin Across the Caribbean (1940-1942).

The following two extracts have been copied from the journal of the 1941 trip, and computer translated into English.

 24 April 1941

‘I leave Havana at six o’clock in the morning. My driver Juan leaves me stranded in the middle of a deserted street in Vedado. His engine sputters and then dies: “What bad luck!” he repeats, raising his arms to the sky.

I jump into a tram, then a taxi, and finally into the Pan-American limousine on Prado. And here I am at the airport. Fortunately, there’s a restaurateur who brings me down from the kitchen a good American breakfast!

Around nine o’clock we board a small plane that takes us to Cienfuegos, where we wait for an hour for the “Clipper” coming from Miami.

From Havana to Cienfuegos, I observe the country from above. Approaching Cienfuegos, there are lakes and lagoons where we have never botanized; it’s probably part of the Ciénaga system, but I doubt there are passable roads to get there.

From Cienfuegos to Jamaica, no incidents (except that we stay at 10,000 feet). No one is upset when, after flying over the mountains of St. Ann, we land in Kingston Bay amidst a landscape dominated by the tall Cephalocereus Swartzii of Port Royal. We disembark - or rather step out of the Clipper - for about ten minutes. The driver Folkes is there because he hasn’t received my letter. We arrange to meet in about fifteen days. Then I reboard the Clipper to cross the Caribbean Sea.

It’s almost evening when we arrive in Barranquilla (Colombia). The Prado Hotel, where everyone stays, is a marvel: terraces, swimming pool, gardens. What a shame that we leave again tomorrow morning at dawn. With someone named Appleton [. . .], I take a tour of the city.

The Black driver, “Panama,” is resourceful. As we pass by, we see the new port, the mouth of the Magdalena River, and flat boats powered by paddle wheels located at the rear-Mississippi-style. These boats travel up the river almost to Bogotá, but it takes a week!

The city is picturesque. The “red-light district,” quite extensive, is actually a “blue-light district.” Prostitution is legalized, and there’s a small stone building labeled “Prophylaxia,” where Venus comes weekly to chat with Esculapius. Most courtesans live alone in their homes. In the evening, as we pass by, their doors are open to reveal brightly lit rooms displaying naive luxury and ad hoc chromolithographs. They resemble shop windows. The love merchant - fully dressed, well-groomed and powdered - sits advantageously in her doorway with hands folded on her lap and her bed clearly visible behind her. A street lined with two rows of these priestesses is quite colorful, especially at night. I’ve seen similar scenes in Mérida in Yucatán.

At the Prado Hotel, several of us who “clipped” together are present, including a Basque American businessman with whom I dine [. . .]. An interesting man. There’s also an engineer from Davenport, Iowa here for constructing the American naval base in Port-of-Spain. He’s not too thrilled about leaving his family behind for one or maybe two years.’

9 May 1941

‘We departed Montego Bay at around 8 a.m., following the coastline. For a long stretch, we traveled past mangrove marshes and encountered a rich variety of coastal vegetation, including Batis maritima, Coccoloba uvifera, Tournefortia gnaphalodes, and Suriana maritima. The striking golden leather fern (Acrostichum aureum) spread in vast formations, reaching into the brackish water. In the drier areas, we observed Opuntia dillenii, Agave species, and a Guilandina.

Turning inland, we visited a beautiful waterfall surrounded by a lush environment of Grias cauliflora, coconut palms (Cocos nucifera), Calyptronoma swartzii, and the towering Ceiba pentandra. This scenic location, frequented by tourists, displayed an impressive array of tropical flora. We then dined in St. Ann’s Bay before continuing our journey through Fern Gully, a narrow ravine renowned for its towering ferns. The dense, non-arborescent fern species, including Dryopteris, lined the route, adding to the area’s allure. Despite its fame, the tourist literature exaggerates the prevalence of this type of vegetation across Jamaica, as the island’s flora is far more diverse.

Upon exiting Fern Gully, we emerged onto a verdant plateau dotted with large trees. The landscape, with its scattered Roystonea jamaicensis palms stretching toward the sky, evoked the temperate countryside of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. As is common in the region, much of this beautiful land belonged to a few wealthy landowners. Our route led us through these cool, picturesque valleys before ascending Mount Diablo. Along the way, we encountered Brassia maculata, a terrestrial orchid in full bloom, its pale flowers offered for sale in neat bundles by local children. They also sold Hippeastrum puniceum, adding vibrant color to the roadside stalls.

Leaving the plateau behind, I noted the presence of Rhytidophyllum tomentosum, Bletia, Lantana camara, and a remarkable abundance of epiphytic bromeliads (Hohenbergia or Vriesia) clinging to tree branches. As we made our return journey through Spanish Town toward Kingston, the evening light cast a golden glow over the landscape. The road was alive with ox carts returning from the fields, vendors selling coconuts - signaled by an upright palm frond - and women walking swiftly, balancing heavy loads on their heads. In a vast sugarcane field, a majestic Ceiba pentandra stood in solitary grandeur, a sight I captured in color photography to preserve the memory of this remarkable day.’

An unpleasant odour of musk

‘The flesh [of Hoatzins, locally called Ciganas] has an unpleasant odour of musk combined with wet hides - a smell called by the Brazilians catinga; it is, therefore, uneatable. If it be as unpalateable to carnivorous animals as it is to man, the immunity from persecution which it would thereby enjoy would account for its existing in such great numbers throughout the country.’ This is from the much-revered natural history journals written by Henry Walter Bates - born two centuries ago today - after spending 11 years in the Amazon. His observations and research, like that of his friend Russell Wallace, supported the new theories, at the time, being put forward by Charles Darwin.

Bates was born on 8 February 1825, in Leicester, England, into a family of modest means, his father being a stocking maker. Despite limited formal education, he attended local schools and became proficient in Latin and French, which later helped him access scientific literature. At age 13, he became an apprentice to a hosier but continued pursuing a passion for entomology in his spare time. He joined the Mechanics’ Institute (which had a library), studied in his spare time and collected insects in Charnwood Forest. In 1843 he had a short paper on beetles published in the journal Zoologist. He met Wallace, a keen entomologist, who had taken a teaching post in the Leicester Collegiate School. The two men shared a passion to explore exotic lands. 

Inspired particularly by Alexander von Humboldt’s accounts of the Amazon (see Humboldt’s genius), Bates and Wallace embarked on an expedition to South America in 1848 to study the region’s biodiversity. They intended to fund their trip by collecting and selling specimens of plants and animals. Though Wallace returned to England in 1852, Bates went on to spend 11 years (1848-1859) in the Amazon, a period marked by much hardship and astonishing discoveries: during this period, he collected over 14,000 species, of which approximately 8,000 were new to science. 

On his return, Bates spent the next three years writing an account of the trip, This was published as The Naturalist on the River Amazons in 1863, and would soon become widely regarded as one of the finest accounts of natural history travels. In the work, he details his discovery of what would become named as Batesian mimicry - a phenomenon whereby harmless species evolve to imitate the warning signals of harmful species to avoid predators. The idea proved a significant contribution to the then emerging theory of natural selection.

Also in 1863, Bates married Sarah Ann Mason with whom he had several children. From 1864 onwards, he worked as assistant secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (though effectively he acted as secretary - the senior post being occupied by a noble figurehead). He sold his personal Lepidoptera collection, and began to work mostly on beetles. From 1868 to 1869 and in 1878 he was president of the Entomological Society of London. In 1871 he was elected a fellow of the Linnaean Society, and in 1881 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He died in 1892. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The Natural History Museum (which today holds most of his collection).

Bates’ original 1863 work, in two volumes, can be freely read online at Internet Archive. However, much more recently, in 2020, The Natural History Museum published The Naturalist on the River Amazon: The Journals & Writings of Henry Walter Bates. According to the museum, the book includes pages from Bates’ illustrated notebooks and excerpts from, in the words of Charles Darwin, ‘the best book of natural history travels ever published’.

Most of The Naturalist on the River Amazons reads more like a memoir than a journal or diary, but there are a few dated extracts. Here are two.

29 August 1848 

‘The Mojú, a stream little inferior to the Thames in size, is connected about 20 miles from its mouth by means of a short artificial canal with a small stream, the Igarapé-mirim, which flows the opposite way into the water-system of the Tocantins. Small vessels like ours take this route in preference to the stormy passage by way of the main river, although the distance is considerably greater. We passed through the canal yesterday, and to-day have been threading our way through a labyrinth of narrow channels; their banks all clothed with the same magnificent forest; but agreeably varied by houses of planters and settlers. We passed many quite large establishments, besides one pretty little village, called Santa Anna. All these channels are washed through by the tides, - the ebb, contrary to what takes place in the short canal, setting towards the Tocantins. The water is almost tepid (77° Fahr.), and the rank vegetation all around seems reeking with moisture. The country however, as we were told, is perfectly healthy. Some of the houses are built on wooden piles driven into the mud of the swamp.

In the afternoon we reached the end of the last channel, called the Anapú, which runs for several miles between two unbroken lilies of fan-leaved palms, forming with their straight stems colossal palisades. On rounding a point of land we came in full view of the Tocantins. The event was announced by one of our Indians, who was on the look-out at the prow, shouting, “La esta o Paraná-uassú!” “Behold, the great river!” It was a grand sight - a broad expanse of dark waters dancing merrily to the breeze; the opposite shore, a narrow blue line, miles away. We went ashore on an island covered with palm-trees, to make a fire and boil our kettle for tea. I wandered a short way inland, and was astounded at the prospect. The land lay below the upper level of the daily tides, so that there was no underwood, and the ground was bare. The trees were almost all of one species of Palm, the gigantic fan-leaved Mauritia flexuosa; on the borders only was there a small number of a second kind, the equally remarkable Ubussú palm, Manicaria saccifera. The Ubussú has erect, uncut leaves, twenty-five feet long, and six feet wide, all arranged round the top of a four-feet high stem, so as to form a figure like that of a colossal shuttlecock. The fan-leaved palms, which clothed nearly the entire islet, had huge cylindrical smooth stems, three feet in diameter, and about a hundred feet high. The crowns were formed of enormous clusters of fan-shaped leaves, the stalks alone of which measured seven to ten feet in length. Nothing in the vegetable world could be more imposing than this grove of palms. There was no underwood to obstruct the view of the long perspective of towering columns. The crowns, which were densely packed together at an immense height overhead, shut out the rays of the sun; and the gloomy solitude beneath, through which the sound of our voices seemed to reverberate, could be compared to nothing so well as a solemn temple. The fruits of the two palms were scattered over the ground; those of the Ubussú adhere together by twos and threes, and have a rough, brown-coloured shell; the fruit of the Mauritia, on the contrary, is of a bright red hue, and the skin is impressed with deep crossing lines, which give it a resemblance to a quilted cricket-ball.

About midnight, the tide being favourable and the breeze strong, we crossed the river, taking it in a slanting direction, a distance of sixteen miles, and arrived at eight o’clock the following morning at Cametá. This is a town of some importance, pleasantly situated on the somewhat high terra firma of the left bank of the Tocantins. I will defer giving an account of the place till the end of this narrative of our Tocantins voyage. We lost here another of our men, who got drinking with some old companions ashore, and were obliged to start on the difficult journey up the river with two hands only, and they in a very dissatisfied humour with the prospect.

The river view from Cametá is magnificent. The town is situated, as already mentioned, on a high bank, which forms quite a considerable elevation for this fiat country, and the broad expanse of dark-green waters is studded with low, palm-clad islands, the prospect down river, however, being clear, or bounded only by a sealike horizon of water and sky. The shores are washed by the breeze-tossed waters into little bays and creeks, fringed with sandy beaches. The Tocantins has been likened, by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who crossed its mouth in 1846, to the Ganges. It is upwards of ten miles in breadth at its mouth; opposite Cametá it is five miles broad. Mr. Burchell, the well- known English traveller, descended the river from the mining provinces of interior Brazil some years before our visit. Unfortunately, the utility of this fine stream is impaired by the numerous obstructions to its navigation in the shape of cataracts and rapids, which commence, in ascending, at about 120 miles above Cametá, as will be seen in the sequel.’

30 August 1848 

‘Arrived, in company with Senhor Laroque, an intelligent Portuguese merchant, at Vista Alegre, fifteen miles above Cameta. This was the residence of Senhor Antonio Ferreira Gomez, and was a fair sample of a Brazilian planter’s establishment in this part of the country. The buildings covered a wide space, the dwelling-house being separated from the place of business, and as both were built on low, flooded ground, the communication between the two was by means of a long wooden bridge. From the office and visitors’ apartments a wooden pier extended into the river. The whole was raised on piles above high-water mark. There was a rude mill for grinding sugar-cane, worked by bullocks, but cashaça, or rum, was the only article manufactured from the juice. Behind the buildings was a small piece of ground cleared from the forest, and planted with fruit-trees, orange, lemon, genipapa, goyava, and others; and beyond this, a broad path through a neglected plantation of coffee and cacao, led to several large sheds, where the farinha, or mandiocca meal, was manufactured.

The plantations of mandiocca are always scattered about in the forest, some of them being on islands in the middle of the river. Land being plentiful, and the plough, as well as, indeed, nearly all other agricultural implements, unknown, the same ground is not planted three years together; but a new piece of forest is cleared every alternate year, and the old clearing suffered to relapse into jungle.

We stayed here two days, sleeping ashore in the apartment devoted to strangers. As usual in Brazilian houses of the middle class, we were not introduced to the female members of the family, and, indeed, saw nothing of them except at a distance. In the forest and thickets about the place we were tolerably successful in collecting, finding a number of birds and insects which do not occur at Para. I saw here, for the first time, the sky-blue Chatterer (Ampelis cotinga). It was on the topmost bough of a very lofty tree, and completely out of the reach of an ordinary fowling-piece. The beautiful light-blue colour of its plumage was plainly discernible at that distance. It is a dull, quiet bird. A much commoner species was the Cigana or Gipsy (Opisthocomus cristatus), a bird belonging to the same order, Gallinacea, as our domestic fowl. It is about the size of a pheasant; the plumage is dark brown, varied with reddish, and the head is adorned with a crest of long feathers. It is a remarkable bird in many respects. The hind toe is not placed high above the level of the other toes, as it is in the fowl-order generally, but lies on the same plane with them; the shape of the foot becomes thus suited to the purely arboreal habits of the bird, enabling it to grasp firmly the branches of trees. This is a distinguishing character of all the birds in equinoctial America which represent the fowl and pheasant tribes of the old world, and affords another proof of the adaptation of the Fauna to a forest region. The Cigana lives in considerable flocks on the lower trees and bushes bordering the streams and lagoons, and feeds on various wild fruits, especially the sour Goyava (Psidium sp.). The natives say it devours the fruit of arborescent Arums (Caladium arborescens), which grow in crowded masses around the swampy banks of lagoons. Its voice is a harsh, grating hiss; it makes the noise when alarmed, all the individuals sibilating as they fly heavily away from tree to tree, when disturbed by passing canoes. It is polygamous, like other members of the same order. It is never, however, by any chance, seen on the ground, and is nowhere domesticated. The flesh has an unpleasant odour of musk combined with wet hides - a smell called by the Brazilians catinga; it is, therefore, uneatable. If it be as unpalateable to carnivorous animals as it is to man, the immunity from persecution which it would thereby enjoy would account for its existing in such great numbers throughout the country.

A great number of the insects which we found here were different from those of Para. Species characteristic of the one locality were replaced by allied species in the other, a fact which would tend to the conclusion that the Tocantins serves, to some extent, as a barrier to migration. This was especially the case with the Papilios of the group which wear a livery of black, green, and red. P. Echelus of this group, which is so common at Para, was here absent, and its place supplied by the closely related P. Æneides. Both have the same habits, and seem to fill similar spheres in the natural economy of the two districts. Another handsome butterfly taken here was a member of the Erycinidæ family, the Alesa Prema, which is of a dazzling emerald-green colour chequered with black. I caught here a young Iguana; Iguanas, however, are extremely common everywhere throughout the country. They are especially numerous in the neighbourhood of villages, where they climb about fruit-trees overrun with creepers. The eggs, which are oblong, and about an inch and a half in length, are laid in hollow trees, and are very pleasant eating taken raw and mixed with farinha. The colour of the skin in the Iguana changes like that of the chameleon; in fact, it is called chameleon by the Portuguese. It grows to a length of five feet, and becomes enormously fat. This lizard is interesting to English readers on account of its relationship to the colossal fossil reptile of the Wealden, the Iguanodon. The Iguana is one of the stupidest animals I ever met with. The one I caught dropped helplessly from a tree just ahead of me; it turned round for a moment to have an idiotic stare at the intruder, and then set off running along the pathway. I ran after it, and it then stopped as a timid dog would do, crouching down, and permitting me to seize it by the neck and carry it off.

We lost here another of our crew; and thus, at the commencement of our voyage, had before us the prospect of being forced to return, from sheer want of hands to manage the canoe. Senhor Gomez, to whom we had brought letters of introduction from Senhor Joao Augusto Correia, a Brazilian gentleman of high standing at Para, tried what he could do to induce the canoe-men of his neighbourhood to engage with us, but it was a vain endeavour. The people of these parts seemed to be above working for wages. They are naturally indolent, and besides, have all some little business or plantation of their own, which gives them a livelihood with independence. It is difficult to obtain hands under any circumstances, but it was particularly so in our case, from being foreigners, and suspected, as was natural amongst ignorant people, of being strange in our habits. At length, our host lent us two of his slaves to help us on another stage, namely, to the village of Baiaō, where we had great hopes of having this, our urgent want, supplied by the military commandant of the district.’

Devastation in Darwin

Half a century ago today, Cyclone Tracy devastated the Australian town of Darwin, destroying 80% of houses, making 41,000 out of the 47,000 residents homeless, and killing 66 people. The Age newspaper called it a ‘disaster of the first magnitude . . . without parallel in Australia’s history.’ I was there, having arrived from Bali just a few weeks earlier after spending six months travelling across Asia. I’d got a job working in the power station, and I had a room in a house of travellers owned by Dutch Peter. It was Christmas Eve when the wind started blowing, and most people expected Tracy to veer away from land -  like a cyclone earlier in the year - but in the early hours of the morning of Christmas Day it struck with a vengeance, blowing at over 100 mph. Around 3 in the morning, after the eye had given us all a few minutes peace, Dutch Peter’s house exploded, the wooden walls and all its contents, including us, were catapulted into the night. What follows is my (rather hastily written) diary account of that night and the following few days.

24-30 December 1974
‘And suddenly it is Christmas Eve. Work [I was employed by the local power station] isn’t really work (yesterday it was quite interesting - we had to take the complete two ton end of the cylinder off - I was a little afraid the hoist wasn’t going to hold). I finish work at 12:00 and then at 2:00 there’s a nice little work social at the Rugby Union club - beer as free as the air and a constant flow of steaks. I talk to a range of people including the foreman - I am really pissed. He invites me round to lunch tomorrow - I am beginning to get blotto - the beer is running out but he keeps giving me cans - at one point he informs me about the cyclone heading straight for Darwin. I’ve no idea how I get home. Later, Gus tells me I shouted ‘the cyclone’s really coming’ and passed out, and that all attempts to wake me for dinner were in vain.

I wake early in the evening and go upstairs with a splitting headache. I sleep some more until I wake up absolutely soaking - the rain is howling in through the window and the floor is flooded. I join the others downstairs - it’s pretty bad here too. For some reason we all go to Peter’s room or the room behind it, at least it’s dry there. The wind is getting pretty heavy - Wayne is fairly drunk and jolly - doors are banging - the wind continues to get stronger. We make expeditions outside - first one, just after midnight, is to see why a car has stopped - it is virtually impossible to walk, the wind is so strong. Inside again, I go to fetch my diary and clutch onto it - things are getting a little serious - I suggest going to the hospital or somewhere safe, but there are no takers. I fetched my ‘mustn’t lose’ things such as money, passport etc and put them in a plastic bag with the diary. I sleep a while along with Pete and Go and Gus - Wayne falls asleep in the cupboard - Paul and Susie are asleep in the other dry room. When the eye comes, sometime between 2 and 3, it is a chance to sleep undisturbed

When the eye has passed, the wind comes back with a vengeance in the other direction blowing against the windows of the room I’m in - the gusts reach a tremendous force (from virtually nothing at all in a matter of minutes) - Gus is still half asleep, I wake him and he jumps in the cupboard with Wayne - Go and I have drawers over our heads and we crouch down behind the bed - we can’t get out of the room, the door won’t open - the whole wall is going to go - Jesus - I reach up with my hand up to the bed for my plastic bag and pull it down to me - and the house explodes.

I remember shouting and swearing and somersaulting through the air and landing on a load of rubbish - I may have been unconscious for a while. The next thing I know is that thousands of pieces of glass are hitting in my back - I lie down and grope with my hand for some cover - I feel so lucky because I find a board just big enough to cover me - I hold onto it with my life to stop the wind blowing it away. I am lying on my side on glass and wood - I dare not move my left leg because I think it’s slit open or broken - I can’t see much - I think I’m facing away from the house but I’m afraid to move and look round. Rocks hit my board, and sometimes I nearly lose it (the board) - I think through what I’ll do if the board does fly, and I decide to make a run for it. It is cold too - I find a plastic mac by me and wrap myself in it but the wind keeps blowing it off - I am shivering - I can’t decide if I’m going to live - when I think I see lights I shout several times but my voice can’t rise up above the roar of the storm - I am sure all the others [from the house] are dead - I can’t see how they can be alive - I am feeling so lucky that I’m not in pain and that I found the board to protect me.

I lie in two inches of water thinking, working out plans, looking, but never moving other than my hand, which keeps searching around for more protection. Occasionally a light glimmers from across the way - I can’t work out which direction it is, nor can I work out what a bridge-like structure is (it has cars underneath). Later, as visibility improves, I see lights and a house nearby - I am shouting more often now as the dense mistiness lifts.

More than two hours later, and dawn is approaching and the wind is abating to nothing more than a strong gale. I look around a little more and discover that my board has only remained where it is because it’s wedged down by the bed that I’d been hiding behind. Then I hear voices behind me - there are people alive - I pull myself together to turn over - it is the first time I’ve moved properly in two and a half hours, There is a light and I can see Peter and the van. There is no cut in my leg, or anything seriously wrong with it, but I still have to hobble when I walk. I go to the van where I find Gerry. Willem joins us shortly. Paul and Susie are safe in a cupboard. Only Wayne and Gus are missing - Peter and Joel are searching for them frantically but there is no sign. We are really worried that they are under the pile of debris where Peter’s house once stood.

Long after it is light and the wind has fallen still more, we hear that they are next door. I am crying with joy. Incredible. We all have little wounds but nobody is seriously hurt - Gus, Wayne, Paul, Joel and Peter start a frantic search of neighbouring houses, and then they take a couple of cars and start taking people down to the hospital. I really want to be part of this operation - I even try to join them at one point but my knee is really crook. The whole town is completely devastated - steel telegraph poles are bent to the ground - palm trees completely uprooted - roofs lying around everywhere except on the tops of houses. All that is left of Peter’s house is the bathroom on stilts and one of the long walls at a 45 degree angle, not a thing else upstairs. The dining room and kitchen below are wrecked. Everything, absolutely everything, is 100% wet - there are glass, wood, mosquito netting, nails, doors, clothes, books, everywhere. I take a ride down to the hospital - it is fenced in (the wire around the entrance had been put up before to stop hoards of people). I talk to someone at the hospital within 15 minutes but they aren’t interested in my problems and I’m not surprised - many people are bleeding or crying or nursing wounded children - all around is tragedy, tragedy tragedy.

I hitch back to the others - there’s not a building left in tact - corrugated iron, power lines, cars, caravans, trees are strewn everywhere - some of the road is under 6-8 in of water - destruction is everywhere you look.

When I get back, Peter and Wayne are hanging about the house, while most of the others have gone to the first aid centre. I chuck a few things in the van - Paul and I drive to the centre with some food and wine - we find the others from the house huddled in warm blankets - I join them and we swap stories. Gus has some bad cuts by the ear, Joel cut his foot running around helping people afterwards. Peter and Gerry had sheltered in the van soon after the house exploded; Wayne had lain on the grass in the middle of the road, he’d lost his way following Gus who ran to the other house. Gus, Gerry and I are the worst injured. After a couple of hours, a doctor comes, but again he’s not interested in me - Gus and Gerry get some stitches. Willem is OK even though he had been trapped and needed rescuing by Joel and Peter - Go is OK but for some cut knuckles. It’s Christmas Day.

Paul ferries us all to Darwin High School in little groups with blankets as our only clothes. I have real trouble bending my leg, and it takes time to get in and out of the purloined Volkswagen. We are among the first to arrive at the school. Everywhere is under water, but there’s not too much damage. We annex a dryish room for ourselves, but we can’t get the water out because the corridor is under water too. Peter is alternating between fits of crying and fits of trying to organise everybody, and boss them around. Paul goes back to pick up all the obvious things lying about round the house pile, and then he returns the car, and gets Peter’s wagon going

I have a little cry at the thought of Julian and Melanie waking Mum and Dad, then sitting down excitedly for breakfast and turning on the radio and hearing about Darwin. We all manage to send a telegram off home for free, and, a day later, we get a free telephone call. I am emotionally distraught hearing all their voices after so long.

The Aussie prime minister Whitlam flies back from his European tour and spends an afternoon here; Jim Cairns stays a little longer. The head of a newly formed disaster squad is working 25 hours a day, and, apparently, nearly breaking down sometimes.

People begin to pour into the school, and it becomes a main centre where all goods (food, clothes, cigarettes) are brought before distribution. There is a small team of dedicated cooks - so we have good food. My knee doubles in size. I am so incapacitated that I really can’t walk, it is as much as I can do to go to the toilet. Willem, Gerry and Gus do nothing either.

Around us, the authorities (concerned largely about health and disease because the water supply broke down) have acted efficiently. People were already being evacuated on Boxing Day, and by the third day they had got 6,000 people out by plane. The radio station was working again quite quickly, which helped everyone know what was going on, and what to do.

Some of our group keep going back to the house looking for their stuff, and especially for Peter’s money which was supposed to be in an attache case. Poor Peter, having lost his house, never found his money, and one day he just left, in his combie van, for Sydney.

Paul, Joel and Wayne work consistently - Susie and I do a little work in the kitchen - I prefer to wash dishes for two hours, and then get my meal immediately than to queue for half an hour. There are almost 800 people here, I think, and the queues are unbelievable. The evacuation programme continues and is going better than expected.

On 29th December the radio informs us that single men can now be evacuated.

Susie is going to Sydney. Willem is unsure how he is going to make it back to the island where he was working. Kiki is living and working at the Travel Lodge, and is happy to stay here.

Originally, I had planned to fly to Townsville and hitch down the coast (wanting to see something of Australia) but the evacuation planes are only flying to state capitals. I feel Brisbane is already too far south so I decide I might as well go with Gerry to Sydney. There is a lot of messing about before we are finally taken to the airport (in a beaut air-conditioned bus). However, the officials aren’t expecting another coach load, and there are queues and queues waiting to get on the one plane standing. We, and a lot of others already there, don’t make it - we sleep in the destroyed airport buildings. We spend the next day in the airport watching coach loads of women and children being evacuated; we are given food and drink all day long by the Salvation Army. There are newspapers lying around with long stories about Darwin. I talk for a while to one of the people from the school - he adores Joni Mitchell, but didn’t enjoy his overland trip.

Early evening the Starlifter we’d been promised arrives. It is going to take us all away from this devastated disaster area - we all fetch our bags and rush to the buses. I am horrified at the way the Americans are squeezing every last person in. We have to sit cross-legged in about 1 sq ft - from front to back nobody is going to be able to move. I still can’t bend my legs properly and so decide to get off - I’m not that desperate. I think the American was going for some sort of people record - he left all the baggage behind. Early this morning, on the first flight, they were trying hard to find people to go to Townsville - I should have gone, as I’d planned, but I was loathe to leave new friends after so long travelling. It was sad any way to leave Paul, Wayne and Gus - I had some good times with them.

The following morning I take the first plane - a Hercules to Brisbane. We sit on seats, and are allowed in the cockpit to have a smoke - it’s a beautiful serene sight, floating above the clouds. The journey takes five hours and we land in late afternoon - we are shuttled across a boring-looking town to an evacuation centre - an empty bus garage with clothes, social services, Sally Army, airline officials. We register, are given $62, and then booked onto a flight to Sydney. We eat, and I put on some new underpants.’

A glow of enthusiasm

‘The air is distinctly fragrant with balsam and resin and mint - every breath of it a gift we may well thank God for. Who could ever guess that so rough a wilderness should yet be so full of good things. [. . .] God himself seems to be always doing his best here, working like a man in a glow of enthusiasm.’ This is from the diaries of the Scottish-born American John Muir, an early and influential voice in the development of US national parks who died 110 years ago today. 

Muir was born in 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland. Until the age of eleven he attended local schools but, in 1849, his family emigrated to the US, settling first at Fountain Lake and then moving to Hickory Hill Farm near Portage, Wisconsin. Muir’s father worked his family hard but whenever they had time he and his younger brother would explore the rich Wisconsin countryside. Muir developed a love of the natural world, but he also became an inventor, a carver and clock maker. In 1860 he traveled the short distance south to Madison, to the state fair, where he won admiration and prizes, and enrolled in the university. Although doing well, after three years he left to travel the northern US and Canada, odd-jobbing his way through the as yet unspoiled land. An industrial accident in 1867 nearly cost him an eye; thereafter, it is said, he resolved to dedicate his life to exploring and preserving nature. 

Muir traveled extensively, walking from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico and eventually settling in California in 1868. He became particularly enchanted with Yosemite Valley, describing it as ‘the grandest of all special temples of Nature’. Over the next six years, he explored and studied the Sierra Nevada mountains, developing groundbreaking theories about glacial formation. His environmental advocacy proved transformative as he was instrumental in establishing several national parks, including Yosemite (1890), Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon. In 1892, he co-founded the Sierra Club, serving as its first president, to promote conservation and environmental protection.

Muir’s writings and activism significantly influenced public perception of wilderness areas and inspired conservation efforts. He was particularly close to President Theodore Roosevelt, accompanying him on a pivotal trip to Yosemite that helped secure federal protection for the park. He was also a prolific writer, publishing 300 articles and 10 major books about his travels and environmental philosophy. Some of his notable works include The Mountains of California and Our National Parks. 

Muir married Louie Wanda Strentzel in 1880 and he managed a family fruit ranch in Martinez, California, while continuing his conservation work. He died on 24 December 1914. Encyclopaedia Britannica has this assessment of the man: ‘His conviction that wilderness areas should be federally protected as national parks has given generations of US citizens and tourists an opportunity to appreciate America’s landscapes as they exist in the absence of human industrial influence. Muir’s writings continue to serve as sources of inspiration for naturalists and conservationists in the US and worldwide.’ 

Further information is also available from Wikipedia and The Sierra Club.

Muir kept extensive diaries throughout his life - some 78 journals and 25 notebooks. Nearly every page of these can be viewed at the University of the Pacific’s Scholarly Commons website. The diaries served as a basic resource for his books and many articles though they do not seem to have been published directly. Nevertheless a couple of his early books are presented in diary form: My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) and A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916) both published by Houghton Mifflin Company. 

The following extracts are taken from my First Summer in the Sierra.

19 June 1869 

‘Pure sunshine all day. How beautiful a rock is made by leaf shadows! Those of the live oak are particularly clear and distinct, and beyond all art in grace and delicacy, now still as if painted on stone, now gliding softly as if afraid of noise, now dancing, waltzing in swift, merry swirls, or jumping on and off sunny rocks in quick dashes like wave embroidery on seashore cliffs. How true and substantial is this shadow beauty, and with what sublime extravagance is beauty thus multiplied! The big orange lilies are now arrayed in all their glory of leaf and flower. Noble plants, in perfect health, Nature’s darlings.’

20 June 1869

‘Some of the silly sheep got caught fast in a tangle of chaparral this morning, like flies in a spider’s web, and had to be helped out. Carlo found them and tried to drive them from the trap by the easiest way. How far above sheep are intelligent dogs! No friend and helper can be more affectionate and constant than Carlo. The noble St. Bernard is an honor to his race.

The air is distinctly fragrant with balsam and resin and mint - every breath of it a gift we may well thank God for. Who could ever guess that so rough a wilderness should yet be so full of good things. One seems to be in a majestic domed pavilion in which a grand play is being acted with scenery and music and incense, - all the furniture and action so interesting we are in no danger of being called on to endure one dull moment. God himself seems to be always doing his best here, working like a man in a glow of enthusiasm.’

22 June 1869

‘Unusually cloudy. Besides the periodical shower-bearing cumuli there is a thin, diffused, fog-like cloud overhead. About .75 in all.’

23 June 1869 

‘Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.’

23 July 1869

‘Another midday cloudland, displaying power and beauty that one never wearies in beholding but hopelessly unsketchable and untellable. What can poor mortals say about clouds? While a description of their huge glowing domes and ridges, shadowy gulfs and cañons, and feather-edged ravines is being tried, they vanish, leading no visible ruins. Nevertheless, these fleeting sky mountains are as substantial and significant as the more lasting upheavals of granite beneath them. Both alike are built up and die, and in God’s calendar difference of duration is nothing. We can only dream about them in wondering, worshiping admiration, happier than we dare tell even to friends who see farthest in sympathy, glad to know that not a crystal or vapor particle of them hard or soft, is lost; that they sink and vanish only to rise again and again in higher and higher beauty. As to our work, duty, influence, etc. concerning which so much fussy pother is made, it will not fail of its due effect, though like lichen on a stone, we keep silent.’

2 August 1869

‘Clouds and showers, about the same as yesterday. Sketching all day on the North Dome until four or five o’clock in the afternoon, when, as I was busily employed thinking only of the glorious Yosemite landscape, trying to draw every tree and every line and feature of the rocks, I was suddenly, and without warning, possessed with the notion that my friend, Professor J. D. Butler, of the State University of Wisconsin, was below me in the valley, and I jumped up full of the idea of meeting him, with almost as much startling excitement as if he had suddenly touched me to make me look up. Leaving my work without the slightest deliberation, I ran down the western slope of the Dome and along the brink of the valley wall, looking for a way to the bottom, until I came to a side cañon, which, judging by its apparently continuous growth of trees and bushes, I thought might afford a practical way into the valley, and immediately began to make the descent, late as it was, as if drawn irresistibly. But after a little, common sense stopped me and explained that it would be long after dark ere I could possibly reach the hotel, that the visitors would be asleep, that nobody would know me, that I had no money in my pockets, and moreover was without a coat. I therefore compelled myself to stop, and finally succeeded in reasoning myself out of the notion of seeking my friend in the dark, whose presence I only felt in a strange, telepathic way. I succeeded in dragging myself back through the woods to camp, never for a moment wavering, however, in my determination to go down to him next morning. This I think is the most unexplainable notion that ever struck me. Had some one whispered in my ear while I sat on the Dome, where I had spent so many days, that Professor Butler was in the valley, I could not have been more surprised and startled. When I was leaving the university, he said, “Now, John, I want to hold you in sight and watch your career. Promise to write me at least once a year.” I received a letter from him in July, at our first camp in the Hollow, written in May, in which he said that he might possibly visit California some time this summer and therefore hoped to meet me. But inasmuch he named no meeting-place, and gave no directions as to the course he would probably follow, and as I should be in the wilderness all summer, I had not the slightest hope of seeing him, and all thought of the matter had vanished from my mind until this afternoon, when he seemed to be wafted bodily almost against my face. Well, to-morrow I shall see; for, reasonable or unreasonable, I feel I must go.’

Journal of a trapper

‘On the 28th about 9 o’clock a. m. we were aroused by an alarm of “Indians.” We ran to our horses. All was confusion, each trying to catch his horses. We succeeded in driving them into camp where we caught all but six, which escaped into the prairies. In the meantime the Indians appeared before our camp to the number of 60, of which 15 or 20 were mounted on horseback and the remainder on foot, all being entirely naked, armed with fusees, bows, arrows, etc.’ This is from Journal of a Trapper written by Osborne Russell, born 210 years ago today, which is considered one of the best first-hand narratives about the life of an ordinary trapper during the heyday of the Rocky Mountains fur trade.

Osborne was born on 19 June 1814 into a large farming family in the village of Bowdoinham, Maine. Aged 16, he is said to have run away to sea but to have soon given that up for a job with the Northwest Fur Trapping and Trading Company, which operated in Wisconsin and Minnesota. That led to him joining Nathaniel Wyeth’s Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company, and to being part of an expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Subsequently he joined Jim Bridger’s brigade of Rocky Mountain Fur Company men, continuing with them after a merger that left the American Fur Company in control of the trade. When the fur trade declined, he became a free trapper operating out of Fort Hall (by then part of the Hudson’s Bay Company), staying in the mountains until the great Westward migration began.

In 1843, Russell participated in the so-called Champoeg Meeting (the first attempt at formal governance by European-American and French Canadian pioneers in the Oregon Country) voting in favour of forming a government. He was selected by the First Executive Committee to serve as the Supreme Judge for the Provisional Government of Oregon and served until May of 1844. However, he was unsuccessful in his run for governor of the Provisional Government in 1845, giving his support to George Abernethy. Russell eventually went to California in 1848, after the discovery of gold there. He died in Placerville in 1884. 

There is some limited further information about Russell available on the web (for example at Wikipedia), but mostly this is based on the contents of a journal he kept and which was first published by Boise in 1914, as Journal of a Trapper: or, Nine years in the Rocky Mountains, 1834-1843: being a general description of the country, climate, rivers, lakes, mountains, etc., and a view of the life by a hunter in those regions. According to the website Mountain Men and the Fur Trade, it is ‘one of the best first-hand narratives available of the everyday life of an ordinary trapper during the heyday of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.’

The journal can be read freely online at Internet Archive (a more recent volume edited by Aubrey Haines can also be digitally borrowed at the same site) and at the Library of Western Fur Trade Historical Source Documents. The original manuscript is held in the William Robertson Coe Collection of Western Americana in Yale University Library, and images of its pages are also available on the website.

Here are two extracts from the published diary, one from July 1834, and the other from June 1835.

1834
‘On July 11th we left Bear River and crossed low ridges of broken country for about 15 miles in a northeast direction, and fell on to a stream which ran into Snake River, called Blackfoot. Here we met with Captain B. S. Bonneville and a party of 10 or 12 men. He was on his way to the Columbia and was employed killing and drying buffalo meat for the journey. The next day we traveled in a westerly direction over a rough, mountainous country about 25 miles, and the day following, after traveling about 20 miles in the same direction, we emerged from the mountains into the great valley of the Snake River. On the 16th we crossed the valley and reached the river in about 25 miles travel west. Here Mr. Wyeth concluded to stop, build a fort and deposit the remainder of his merchandise, leaving a few men to protect them, and trade with the Snake and Bannock Indians.

On the 18th we commenced the fort, which was a stockade 80 feet square, built of cottonwood trees set on end, sunk two and one-half feet in the ground and standing about 15 feet above, with two bastions eight feet square at the opposite angles. On the 4th of August the fort was completed and on the 5th the “Stars and Stripes” were unfurled to the breeze at sunrise in the center of a savage and uncivilized country, over an American trading post.

The next day Mr. Wyeth departed for the mouth of the Columbia River with all the party excepting twelve men (myself included) who were stationed at the fort. I now began to experience the difficulties attending a mountaineer, we being all raw hands, excepting the man who had charge of the fort, and a mulatto, the two latter having but very little experience in hunting game with the rifle, and although the country abounded with game, still it wanted experience to kill it.

On the 12th of August myself and three others (the mulatto included) started from the fort to hunt buffalo. We proceeded up the stream running into Snake River near the fort called Ross Fork in an easterly direction about 25 miles, crossed a low mountain in the same direction about five miles and fell on to a stream called the Portneuf. Here we found several large bands of buffalo. We went to a small spring and encamped. I now prepared myself for the first time in my life to kill meat for my supper, with a rifle. I had an elegant one, but had little experience in using it. However, I approached the band of buffaloes, crawling on my hands and knees within about 80 yards of them, then raised my body erect, took aim and shot at a bull. At the crack of the gun the buffaloes all ran off excepting the bull which I had wounded. I then reloaded and shot as fast as I could until I had driven 25 bullets at, in and about him, which was all that I had in my bullet pouch, while the bull still stood, apparently riveted to the spot. I watched him anxiously for half an hour in hopes of seeing him fall, but to no purpose. I was obliged to give it up as a bad job and retreat to our encampment without meat; but the mulatto had better luck - he had killed a fat cow whilst shooting 15 bullets at the band. The next day we succeeded in killing another cow and two bulls. We butchered them, took the meat and returned to the fort.’

***

June 1835
‘On the 28th about 9 o’clock a. m. we were aroused by an alarm of “Indians.” We ran to our horses. All was confusion, each trying to catch his horses. We succeeded in driving them into camp where we caught all but six, which escaped into the prairies. In the meantime the Indians appeared before our camp to the number of 60, of which 15 or 20 were mounted on horseback and the remainder on foot, all being entirely naked, armed with fusees, bows, arrows, etc. They immediately caught the horses which had escaped from us and commenced riding to and fro within gunshot of our camp with all the speed their horses were capable of producing, without shooting a single gun, for about 20 minutes, brandishing their war weapons and yelling at the top of their voices. Some had scalps suspended on small poles which they waved in the air, others had pieces of scarlet cloth with one end fastened round their heads while the other trailed after them. After securing my horses I took my gun, examined the priming, set the breech on the ground and hand on the muzzle, with my arms folded, gazed at the novelty of this scene for some minutes, quite unconscious of danger, until the whistling of balls about my ears gave me to understand that these were something more than mere pictures of imagination and gave me assurance that these living creatures were a little more dangerous than those I had been accustomed to see portrayed on canvas.

The first gun was fired by one of our party, which was taken as the signal for attack on both sides, but the well directed fire from our rifles soon compelled them to retire from the front and take to the brush behind us, where they had the advantage until seven or eight of our men glided into the brush and concealing themselves until their left wing approached within about 30 feet of them before they shot a gun, they then raised and attacked them in the flank. The Indians did not stop to return the fire, but retreated through the brush as fast as possible, dragging their wounded along with them and leaving their dead on the spot. In the meantime myself and the remainder of our party were closely engaged with the center and right. I took advantage of a large tree which stood near the edge of the brush between the Indians and our horses. They approached until the smoke of our guns met. I kept a large German horse pistol loaded by me in case they should make a charge when my gun was empty. When I first stationed myself at the tree I placed a hat on some twigs which grew at the foot of it and would put it in motion by kicking the twigs with my foot in order that they might shoot at the hat and give me a better chance at their heads, but I soon found this sport was no joke for the poor horses behind me were killed and wounded by the balls intended for me. The Indians stood the fight for about two hours, then retreated through the brush with a dismal lamentation. We then began to look about to find what damage they had done us. One of our comrades was found under the side of an old root, wounded by balls in three places in the right and one in the left leg below the knee, no bones having been broken. Another had received a slight wound in the groin. We lost three horses, killed on the spot, and several more were wounded, but not so bad as to be unable to travel. Towards night some of our men followed down the stream about a mile and found the place where they had stopped and laid their wounded comrades on the ground in a circle. The blood was still standing congealed in nine places where they had apparently been dressing the wounds. 

29th - Staid at the same place, fearing no further attempt by the same party of Indians.

30th - Traveled up the main branch about 10 miles. 

July 1st, traveled to the southeast extremity of the valley and encamped for the night. Our wounded comrade suffered very much in riding, although everything was done which lay in our power to ease his sufferings. A pallet was made upon the best gaited horse belonging to the party for him to ride on and one man appointed to lead the animal. 

On the 2d we crossed the Teton mountains in an easterly direction, about 15 miles. The ascent was very steep and rugged, covered with tall pines, but the descent was somewhat smoother.’

Saw Red Shouldered Hawk

‘Saw Red Shouldered Hawk at breakfast time. He came to terrace - after the birds. Wes did desk work - balanced check book etc. I straightened up after last night’s dinner - tablecloth etc. Alex & Helen coming for breakfast tomorrow to pick color for livingroom, so we made blueberry muffins.’ This is a typical entry from the diaries of Gertrude (Guggie) Farrington who was born 110 years ago today, and who died just recently, aged 107. For 15 years, in her later years, she kept a diary. This has been partially transcribed (and is available online) and is also the focus of a Smithsonian Learning Lab project. 

Gertrude was born on 14 June 1914. She graduated from the College of New Rochelle in 1935. In 1944, she was appointed stenographer in Texaco’s personnel department. In 1963, she became the first female officer of Texaco when she was appointed Assistant Secretary of the company. She retired from the firm in 1973. Gertrude and her husband, Wesley, shared a lifelong passion for gardening - indeed Gertude was a key member of the Ridgefield Garden Club. She died in 2021 at the venerable age of 107 - see The Ridgefield Press for a short obituary. 

There is very little further information about Gertrude available online, but between 1978 and 1992, she kept three diaries logging her activities in the local garden club, the community park, and home life in general. These diaries span five years each and track national events, weather reports, and the prices of food, gas, and gardening supplies. They have been used by The Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Gardens for a Learning Lab titled, Explore One Woman’s Experience in Civic Life, 1978-1992. Images of many of the original diary pages, along with transcriptions of the entries, can be found online at The Smithsonian.

Here are the volunteer transcriptions from two facing pages in the first of the five-year diaries (though they have not always been thoroughly copy-edited!) 

19 February 1978
‘Sunday - 15º at 6:45 Sun and cold.

To 9:30 Mass. Saw Red Shouldered Hawk at breakfast time. He came to terrace - after the birds. Wes did desk work - balanced check book etc. I straightened up after last night's dinner - tablecloth etc.

Alex & Helen coming for breakfast tomorrow to pick color for livingroom, so we made blueberry muffins.’

20 February 1978
‘Monday - Minus 12 at 6 AM - Fair - beautiful day - George Washington Celebration. To 7:30 Mass. Dry run to find Mrs Leers’ home on Peaceable Ridge Road (very hilly) to Kathleen Eason to leave Speede Puck Tower & other articles for Hartford Statehouse Gardens Restoration in April. Wes bought golf gloves - none available for me. Home for lunch - Anne Tracey here at 2 o’clock to go over plans for May Garden Club Meeting. Eileen phoned in evening Eddie Conroy died Sunday.

Alex picked Chalk Beige for livingroom. To Dan Machlin’s at five for drinks

19 February 1979
‘Monday - Washington Birthday Celebration

12º at 6 AM - Snowing. Snow stopped about noon and sun came out at 4 pm. Sun 6:45 - 5:35.

Plowed driveway and cut path to bird feeder. After snow stopped plowed again and cleared terrace

Did some hobbying. Made bran muffins and cooked two of our winter squash. Temperature went to 24º in afternoon - 0º at bedtime’

20 February 1979
‘Tuesday - 5º below at 6:30. clear - beautiful day - high 38º. Mr. Vareau reinstalled the swinging door between kitchen and diningroom. Had long talk with his nephew of Railroad Engineer Vareau - worked with Gage - knows Christopher etc. After lunch to Bethel, thistle seed at Agway, groceries at Bethel Market and Miss Emily’s - Booklet for birthday present for Gizela - “Diary of an Edwardian Lady” - Wes split wood. I prepared dinner. Day goes fast.

19 February 1980
‘Tuesday - at Treasure Cay - beautiful morning - walked beach - walked to Atlantis to look at boats - new condominiums Royal Palms - Brills asked us in their Mariner love #1107 for coffee. Watched Caribshelt Towne come in. Bought 3 pieces of meat from them - They go home Thursday. Lunch - nap - went shelling - we picked up beautiful piece of coral - no sand dollars - saw rainbow. Saw Northern Oriole off terrace.’

20 February 1980
‘Ash Wednesday - at Treasure Cay. Beautiful day - walked beach in morning - high tide - sat in sun - I was covered - finished books “Rivers” and “Evergreen” To Post Office - first mail arrived - Eileen - Mary & Jule - all have problems. To hotel at 5 o’clock to wait for bus to church for Ash Wednesday Mass - never came at 5:20 we gave up.’

19 February 198
‘Thursday - 33º at 6 AM - Very foggy - clear morning - clouded up at noon and light done at 5 pm: To Mass. Hobby hour. To Bogus property - killed more gypsy moth and cut some branches - We brought back wood. Lunch and more hobbies. I threw out some material scraps.’

20 February 1981
‘Friday - 50º at 6:30 and raining - it had rained gently all night - Wes heard a Redwing. Rained heavily during day. NYC reported over 2 inches - water over road at 5 o’clock - up to Crimson King on lawn. Hobbies Kes tried to fix pressure tab and it broke. I made Bermuda bag from [[?]] and learned paper pattern was not balanced on both sides after sewing it. Not the best of days but good to be alive!’

19 February 1982
‘Friday - 27º at 6:30 - Sun 6:45 - 5:35 Light snow / rain in morning - shopped in afternoon - started again at night.

We cleaned other half of den floor and applied Lestoil. Eileen came up at 4 o’clock and spent evening with us. Saw possum under bird-feeder at night. ran when Boo barked.’

20 February 1982
‘Saturday - 32º at 6:30. Eileen stayed overnight with us. Left at 8 o’clock with Boo - about one inch snow - sun came out and temperature in 40ºc about 10 o’clock - beautiful day - plants in Solar - we had lunch there.

Did house chores. To Chariots of Fire at Davisbury Cinema at 2:45 - good movie - bought milk at Marcus - home to dress - to Castle with Varga at 6 o’clock for dinner.’ 

Master of Trinity College

William Whewell - scientist, philiosopher, college administrator, polymath - was born 230 years ago today. He defied his humble origins to become prominent in various fields, and to become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, a position he held for 25 years. He is largely forgotten today, in the sense that there’s no modern biography. There is, though, an early biographical work, which makes extensive use of Whewell’s letters, and, more occasionally, of his diaries. One extensive diary quoted in the biography describes a visit to Trinity by the Duke of Wellington.

Whewell was born on 24 May 1794, the eldest child in what would become a large family. His father, a carpenter, wanted him to apprentice to the trade, but William proved academically bright, and came to the attention of Revd Joseph Rowley, head of Lancaster Grammar School, who allowed him to study for free. Later, he won a part-scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1812. Following, perhaps, after his mother who had published poems, he won the Chancellor’s prize for an epic poem entitled Boadicea.

Whewell did well at Trinity, excelling at mathematics; and, having been considered something of a rustic or ill-mannered, he significantly improved his social status. He was appointed as a mathematics lecturer and assistant tutor in 1818, and the following year was one of the founder members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. By this time, his interests had extended beyond mathematics, towards science in general (indeed he is credited with coining the word ‘scientist’ in 1833) and philosophy. In 1828, he was elected to the Chair of Mineralogy.

In subsequent years, Whewell wrote a number of important papers on the subject of tides, and on the principles of education. In 1838 he was elected to the Knightbridge Chair of Moral Philosophy - before which he wrote History of the Inductive Sciences, and after which he wrote its sequel The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.

In 1841, thanks to the election of the Conservative Robert Peel as Prime Minister, Whewell was appointed  Master of Trinity College (over his more senior colleague, Adam Sedgwick, who would have been favoured by a Whig government). A little earlier the same year, he had married Cordelia Marshall. They had no children, and after Cordelia died in 1855, he married again, to Everina Frances, widow of Sir Gilbert Affleck in 1858.

Much of Whewell’s early years as Master were taken up by revising the college statutes; and, as Master of the largest college, he had much influence across the university. He also served twice as vice-chancellor. Although considered a reformer in his youth, he is remembered as a reactionary Master, sternly defending the autonomy of the colleges and the type of liberal education he espoused in Of a Liberal Education in General, with particular reference to the leading studies in the University of Cambridge (1845). He preached his last sermon in Trinity College chapel in February 1866, and died later the same year, after a fall from a horse. There is plenty of information about Whewell online, at Wikipedia, Cambridge University’s Janus website, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Victorian Web.

Richard Yeo, summarising Whewell’s reputation in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), says: ‘At the time of his death Whewell was known as a great master of Trinity and a man of enormous intellectual power and learning. Within the scientific community throughout Europe he was recognized for his research on the tides, his contributions to conceptual debates and terminology, and for his unrivalled knowledge of the history of the sciences. Although some aspects of his philosophy of science were criticized, Whewell’s work set an example for the critical study of the nature of science and, since the 1970s, the historical inquiry on which he claimed to base his philosophy of science has been more warmly appreciated. He combined this study of the physical sciences with publications on education, moral philosophy, and other subjects in a manner that astonished his contemporaries. He did this at a time when intellectual activity was becoming more specialized - a phenomenon that Whewell recognized in his own philosophy of knowledge. Today we are able to see that his achievement was one of the last of its kind.’

The Trinity College archive of Whewell’s papers lists ‘diaries 1817-1853’, but the online summary contains no further details. As far as I can tell, none of these diaries have ever been published. However, Mrs Stair-Douglas (also known as Janet Mary Douglas), having been asked to do so by Whewell’s sister, Mrs Newton, put together a biography of Whewell, largely based on his letters. This was published in 1881 by C Kegan & Co as The Life and Selections from the Correspondence of William Whewell, D. D. late master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Occasionally, the book (freely available at Internet Archive) makes references to, and provides extracts from, Whewell’s diaries.

For example, Stair-Douglas writes: ‘The pocket-books of this year [1829] contain a brief pencil diary, and also a number of notes and memoranda, chiefly mineralogical and architectural, made during the tour in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, upon which Mr. Whewell started on July 4. [. . .]

The diary shows that Mr. Whewell habitually talked to all his fellow-travellers and extracted from them all the information he could. Sometimes a servant girl going to place tells him about wages; or a Belgian laments the high duty upon distillation, which shuts up all the smaller stills; or an ex-Franciscan or Benedictine monk tells him how the convent land was farmed, the wages of the lay brethren, &c. He always offered a seat in his hired carriage to any intelligent person travelling in the same direction. At Spires he notes that he fell in with a Frenchman who had been quarrelling with the Douane on occasion of his bringing from Baden a musical instrument with keys, the notes of which are produced as in the wind harmonica, and adds: “The difficulty of getting on with a German in conversation strikes one more on meeting a Frenchman. The German answers all your questions with the most sincere goodwill, but there you stick - you never set him ” [. . .]

After visiting the source of the Danube in Prince Flirstenburg’s grounds, he mentions his arrival at “the edge of the great basin of Switzerland - a most glorious prospect. The Lake of Constance spread out on the left, the cloudy and uncertain Alps in the distance, and in the midst of the scene six grand castled eminences scattered over a space of five or six miles. The summits bold, and rising abruptly from the more level land, and the ruins one more picturesque than another. If the snowy Alps are seen from hence, as I am told is the case in clear weather, I cannot imagine a more magnificent view. I hope for a fine morning to-morrow and then!”

The entry next morning unfortunately is: “August 7 - Wretchedly bad weather”; however, after quarrelling with tailor and shoemaker, he adds: “Off to Schaffhausen - went immediately to the fall. It is grand in all aspects, but standing in the gallery, all the surrounding objects confused by the blinding spray and a sort of eternity of waters hurrying past and filling the eye, one can scarce believe that the solid universe is not drifting away with immeasurable violence. They have managed also that the water leaps at you, and only seems just to fall short by a foot.” ’

After Whewell’s appointment as Master at Trinity, Stair-Douglas writes, one of the first visitors to the Master’s Lodge, was Mr. Salvin, an architect. He had been summoned because a former college student - one Beresford Hope - had donated money for the college to restore an oriel and mullioned windows removed from the building under previous alterations. She gives the following diary entries concerning this project (which would leave Whewell’s living rooms uninhabitable for most of the year).

19 January 1842
‘Mr. Salvin, architect, arrived, and under his direction and in his presence we made attempts to discover traces of the oriel which formerly existed as part of the front of the Lodge. We found the foundation of the wall of the oriel immediately below the surface of the ground. The plan was semicircular, the diameter of the semicircle 13 feet and 7 inches, exactly opposite to the oriel which exists towards the garden. By examination of the upper storey of the Lodge it appeared that there are no lodging-rooms over Henry VIII’s drawing-room, but only a blank garret, to which there is no access except through the windows.’

16 August 1842
‘We returned to the lodge and stayed one night, the workmen being then employed in the restoration of the front, in pursuance of Mr. Hope’s undertaking to bear the expense of the restoration of the windows and oriel. In the interval I had corresponded with Mr. Hope and had finally learnt that 1,000l. had been placed to the credit of the College at the banker’s to meet the expense.’

17 September 1842
‘We returned to College. The windows of the front were entirely without glass, the rooms without furniture, and the wall was removed from top to bottom where the oriel was to be. The house full of workmen.’

Stair-Douglas goes on to say that Whewell’s journal was kept with considerable regularity at this time. In it, ‘we find mention of very frequent meetings of the Master and Seniors to deliberate upon the revision of the College statutes. These statutes, which the governing body of the College had bound themselves to respect, to preserve intact and to carry into effect, had, from the changes which centuries had brought about in national habits, and many other circumstances, come into such discrepancy with actual, and often with any possible, practice as to occasion very serious difficulties. The Master and other College officers found themselves frequently compelled to choose between deliberately neglecting and modifying that which they had sworn to execute, or attempting to put in operation rules which had become totally useless and inapplicable. The difficulty was a very serious one, and one from which there was no escape.’

26 April 1842
‘Went to London to visit my wife’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, 41 Upper Grosvenor Street. I took with me to London the Draft of the College Statutes as revised by the Seniority, at the various preceding sittings. I reported to the Home Secretary, Sir J. Graham, that this revision was in progress, explained to him the general principles on which it had proceeded, and pointed out the few instances in which the privileges of the Crown were concerned, viz. (1.) Visitatorial power, (2.) Power of giving leave of absence, (3.) Power of appointing ten paupers. He informed me that he should lay the draft before the Attorney and Solicitor-General, and at a subsequent interview agreed to do so, while it was still unconfirmed by the Seniors. I also saw the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, who agreed to consider the unconfirmed draft; and I explained to them that the College did not expect or wish that they should suggest anything except what concerned the prerogatives of the Crown or the course of Law. For the purpose of consideration, I had two transcripts of the revised Statutes made, for which I paid 11l. 6s. I left one of these and a printed copy of the Statutes with Sir James Graham.’

Finally, here is a long extract from Whewell’s diary concerning a visit by the Duke of Wellington - Leader of the House of Lords in Peel’s government at the time - to Cambridge University.

4 July 1842
‘The Duke of Wellington arrived; his carriage stopped at the Great Gate and then proceeded to St. John’s, where he went to attend the Duke of Northumberland’s levee. He then walked with me to Trinity Lodge, and the Fellows were presented to him by me. He then went again to St. John’s Lodge, and accompanied the Duke of Northumberland to the Senate House. After his return to this Lodge he came into the dining-room, and then he conversed a good deal.

With reference to the news of the Queen having been shot at by Bean, which arrived this morning, he spoke of an attempt made to shoot him at Paris. He had previous information that he was to be shot at. The man tried in vain to find an opportunity in the streets. The Duke had said before the event that the assassin must inevitably make the attempt at his own house. So it turned out. The man placed himself behind a watch-box and fired as the Duke entered his own Porte cochère.

The postilion saw him raise his arm, and urged his horses to a gallop, so that the Duke thought he had knocked down one of the sentries in driving in. I asked him why he had done so, and he told me that a man had fired a pistol at me from a place close by. Mr. M (Mr. Milnes?) reminded the Duke that Napoleon left the man a legacy. “Yes” he said, “Napoleon left him 10,000 francs for trying to rid the world of an aristocrat.”

I spoke of the attempt made to kill the King of Portugal in the last century. “Yes,” he said, “that was under the Marquis de Pombal’s administration. It was one of the circumstances which led to the expulsion of the Jesuits. That event was an evil to Spain and Portugal. It ruined the education of the upper orders. They are now men of no education, no moral and religious education. You never find a well educated nobleman in Spain. Consequently they are regarded with no respect by those of lower rank, and are a worthless set. Nothing can save a country but a moral and religious education of its upper classes.”

He spoke much of the Afghan war. He had always disbelieved the accounts, he said, of the abandonment of Ghuznee. He never could believe that a person put in a command so important could be so destitute of resources as the accounts represented him. “I never could believe that such an officer could say that he was obliged to surrender for want of water, when he was snowed up. I never could believe that he could say that he had left the soldiers’ bayonets in the citadel. There is no more convenient way of disposing of a bayonet than at the end of the musket or in the scabbard by the soldier’s side.”

Speaking further of India, he said, “You have there the blessing of a free press; in that country, in a country quite unfitted for such a thing. You might as well try a free press on the quarter-deck of a man of war.”

Passing the picture of Perceval, he said he was a good debater and always spoke well when he had had previously to explain a measure to a meeting of his friends.

When the Duke had been in this Lodge a few minutes, he wished me to return to St. John’s Lodge, where the Duke of Northumberland was. I tried to detain him by representing that the Chancellor could not possibly go to the Senate House for some time, and that we should see him, and could join him when he passed the College gate. But he was not to be detained, so we walked together. As we went he said, “I came to do honour to the Duke of Northumberland, and I must be on the spot for that purpose. Nothing like being on the spot.”

When he had stayed at the Lodge some time after his return from the Senate House, conversing as above, I proposed to him to go to Magdalen College, where the Master had collected a party of distinguished visitors in the Lodge garden, with a band of music. We went there by the back of the Colleges and through Northampton Street. When we arrived near the gate the Duke asked who was the master of Magdalen, and when I told him Mr. Neville Grenville, he said “Oh, I know him, he officiates sometimes at the Chapel Royal. I usually go to the Chapel Royal. Sometimes I am there alone with the reader. ” Then aside, “Dearly beloved Roger.”

The Duke of Wellington went from Magdalen Gardens with the Bishop of London, and returned to Emmanuel to the Vice-Chancellor’s dinner. Here he stayed but a little while and went away before dinner, having determined to sleep at Hatfield. So far as I know he had no dinner till he got there, which must have been near eleven o’clock at night.

I left the dinner at the Vice-Chancellor’s early and came home to receive a few friends at the Lodge.’

Puffins, pipits and plovers

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the American ornithologist and painter of birds, Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Although there are no published books of his journals, Cornell University, which holds the Fuertes archive, has put online a journal kept by Fuertes while exploring the Alaskan coastline, though it is mostly a list of birds seen or shot at!

Fuertes was born in Ithaca, New York, on 4 February 1874. His father, from a Spanish Puerto Rican family, was a professor of civil engineering at Cornell University, while his mother was of Dutch ancestry. As a child, Louis became very interested in birds, being much influenced by Audubon’s Birds of America, and made his first painting of a bird aged 14; and, at 17, he became an Associate Member of the American Ornithologists’ Union. He studied architecture at Cornell University, but all his enthusiasm and aptitude was  focused on painting birds. While still an undergraduate, he was receiving commissions and having his work exhibited. After Cornell, he went to work with Abbott Handerson Thayer, a well-known American artist and naturalist.

In 1898, Fuertes made his first expedition, with Thayer and his son Gerald, to Florida, and the following year accompanied the railway magnate E. H. Harriman on his famous exploration of the Alaska coastline. In 1904, Fuertes married Margaret Sumner and they had two children. He travelled across much of the US and other countries, mostly in the Americas, always in pursuit of birds. A prolific artist, he produced illustrations abundantly, mostly for ornithological books, popular and scientific. He collaborated with Frank Chapman, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, on many assignments. While on a collecting expedition together in Mexico, Fuertes discovered a species of oriole, which Chapman named Icterus fuertesi, commonly called Fuertes’s Oriole, after his friend.

According to an old version of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fuertes work ‘is characterised by a fidelity to nature involving not only objective but subjective accuracy. His genius lay in the power to reproduce subtle, fleeting, and intangible qualities of birds that reflected their individuality to a remarkable degree, an ability as much the result of a highly sympathetic and very extensive knowledge of birds in their haunts as it was of technical skill.’ His most extensive work was a series of large plates illustrating The Birds of New York, published by the state and covering practically every species of eastern North America. He died in 1927. Biographical information can be found from Wikipedia, Cornell University’s Guide to the Louis Agassiz Fuertes Papers, or PBS.

Cornell’s guide to Fuertes’ papers mentions diaries and journals, but few, if any, have been published. In 1936, Doubleday, Doran & Co published Artist and Naturalist in Ethiopia, described as diaries kept on the Field Museum-Chicago Daily News Ethiopian Expedition, by Wilfred Hudson Osgood and Fuertes. It’s most likely, though, that Fuertes only provided the illustrations for this book. Otherwise, the Cornell Institute for Digital Collections has made freely available online diary entries written by Fuertes during Harriman’s Alaska expedition in 1899.

5 June 1899
This A.M. at Fort Wrangell, Alaska, got my first raven, & Townsend’s finch, also Stetler’s jay. Saw lutescent W., shot one, but couldn’t find it. Ridgway got a fine Oregon Junco, Fisher a red throated woodpecker, parus rufescens, & Lincoln’s finch. Heard in the forest, by Farragut bay, a hermit-like thrush song, but couldn’t find the author. The ravens made more noise even than usual. Hummers seen & heard by others of the party.

Townsend’s Sparrow in song. Its note is a typical passerella song. very clear and sweet, noticeable for the same deliberation with which the fox sparrow makes its notes. The bird was found on the sunny slope cleared of its bigger growth, facing the bay. Its appearance is somewhat thrush-like due to its heavily spotted breast and uniform brown back, though its attitudes are perfectly typical of its family.

Golden Crowned sparrows were singing at summit-White Pass. They were found in the scrub hemlock in the snow, and occasionally uttered their clear notes. The song was at once recognizable as zonotrichias, consisting of 8 notes, each perfectly distinct and true, and remarkable for the sweetness and purity of their tone: just the kind of a note one would like to find in the frosty air of the mt. tops. The attitudes and flight of the birds were exactly similar to those of the White Crowned, unless perhaps the occipital part of the crest was thrown out farther. Perhaps this appearance was due to the much darker coloration of the whole top of the head.

Mr. Ridgway got two Leucostictes (litoralis) on the R.R. track at the summit, and pipits were seen & taken. Between Juneau and Glacier bay, we saw Marbled Gull.

24 June 1899
Yesterday afternoon we were followed for hours by a large majestic bird that the various sharks aboard disagreed upon. Elliot thought he was a fulmar petrel -- while Fiske + Merriam thought it was a black-footed Albatross. Its wings were very flat -- a little down curved if anything Puffins were continually flying + little bunches from 5 to 20 or 30 would pass nearby at short intervals. They looked very curious, like parrots fore and guillemots aft. Some murrelets and one new kind of guillemots were seen; the latter white-breasted.

7 July 1899
Put off a party at Popof Island this A.M., July 7-99. and Fisher + I went ashore for about one hour, + got a pair of the big Unalaska Song Sparrow. This and the Kadiak form seen to take very kindly to the rocky shores, seldom being seen inland or in the uplands above the shore. Their song seems to preserve to a remarkable degree, its identity with that of the eastern form, tho’ the birds differ in almost every other respect.

12 July 1899
Fisher and I (many others) went ashore on the mainland at Port Clarence Bay, Alaska, and went up the stream where the ship was watering. First bird seen was a pipit (A. Pensilv. ) and soon after saw the yellow wagtail which we had found in Siberia. It turned out to be common, several specimens were obtained. Alice’s thrush was common, + obtained for the first time on the trip. Cole got a Mealy? red poll, and I found a nest with 5 eggs - both redpolls seemed common enough. About the finest sensation we had was a successful hunt after golden plover. I got 3 + F. two, all in more or less perfect summer plumage. The birds have the most beautiful calls + song. They sit at quite a distance from each other in the wet mossy hill meadows and call and answer back + forth. The calls can all be imitated by a full clear whistle, so that the birds answer quite eagerly - whip whee + a shorter note of the same notes, lower, are the common calls, but the song is a rich full warble, of a cadence - repeated - somewhat suggesting a blue-bird song done in R.B. Grosbeak quality.

Dr. F. + I, while separated by quite a distance, saw at the same time a long tailed Jaeger, sitting on a moss tuft way off on a distant hill; and unbeknownst to it and to us, he became the apex of a triangle , where F. + I were doomed to meet. Our sneak became interesting as we neared each other, + became aware of our position. The bird however, relieved us of our responsibility, + let us both out in a sportsmanlike manner by catching sight of me first, and rising with a scream which I took for alarm at first, but when he repeated it came squealing straight at me, I saw that it was defiance, and there was nothing to do but wait for him to get the right distance and shoot in self-defence. When I had come up to the beautiful bird, + was kneeling over it, Fisher’s voice came up the rise -- “let me take the other,” + I looked up to see the mate rising as he approach, at rt [angles] to the course of the first one. Nearer he came, + I itched as he passed over me at nearly 40 ft. I could see him eye me, + his squealing cries were so near that their quality seemed surprising -- very like big hawk’s cries. His long tail feathers oscillated + spread slightly at the tips with each wing stroke. He went right by me, straight on towards Dr. F. + when he got just right -- bang -- and with wings set in a V he came smoothly down into the grass, and we sat together in the mossy hillside and held the first long-tailed jaegers that either of us had ever seen to shoot at. The feet were black, like black rubber, and the rest of the legs light bird blue and the bill black with a “milky flesh color” interior.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 4 February 2014.