was at the Treaty, on this subject. He has already ordered Troops to Schoharie and Cherry Valley and directed an Engineer to lay out a fort in the Oneida Country, sure I am that nothing in his power will be wanting for the security of every part of this State. As I was on my journey to John's Town when I was honoured with the Receipt of your dispatches, it was too late for your Excellency to execute your Trust respecting the appointment of an additional commissioner for Indian Affairs. Before I left Congress it was pressed upon me to accept the office. I declined it, and on my promise to assist the Commissioner at the proposed Treaty if necessary the matter rested for that time. When I met the Commissioner at Albany the beginning of January to fix the Treaty it appeared that there was no prospect of General Wolcot's and no certainty of General Schuyler's attendance. We concluded therefore to recommend it to Congress to append additional commissioners which occasioned the power committed to you. The reason which induced me to decline the office of commissioner when my acceptance was requested by Congress is this. The Jurisdiction of this State over the Country of the Six Nations is unquestionable as well as ancient. On it depends the legality of all our settlers in the Mohawk Country. Apprehension that the interference of Congress might one. time or other cross the rights or the Interest of the State, and that as a Trustee for Congress I might be embarrassed and restrained in supporting our separate and exclusive Jurisdiction, I did not see my way clear to engage in it, as far as I can judge there is some weight in the objection. I am however not the less obliged to your Excellency for the Testimonial of your good opinion in offering me the appointment. When I pay my Respects I shall take the opportunity of conversing further upon it.

Having now, sir, finished the Duties enjoined me by Congress on my Recess in which to this time I have been employed, I from this Day consider myself as entering on that Respite from publick business with which thro' your interposition the Legislature have been pleased to indulge me.

I have the Honour to be with the greatest respect, Sir your Excellency's most Obedient Humble servant

Jas Duane

MINOR TOPICS

Letter from C. S. Bushnell

Editor of MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY:

In the January number of your valuable Magazine appears a well-written article on the Building of the Monitor, by Rev. Francis B. Wheeler, D.D., giving much important information concerning the origin of this remarkable war vessel. But there are points of interest not fully presented, probably from lack of accurate information. The Messrs. Winslow and Griswold are entitled to so much honor and credit for the part they performed that it would be unjust to them to allow any erroneous impression to go down to posterity detracting from the credit and honor due to the great inventor, Captain John Ericsson, or Admiral Smith, Admiral Paulding, Secretary William H. Seward, and others, for their efforts to secure the construction of the experimental boat, the wonder of the age.

ect.

The first move Messrs. Winslow, Griswold and myself made, after I invited them to join Captain Ericsson and myself in offering to construct the Monitor on equal terms to each of us, was to call on Secretary Seward, who gave us most important assistance in accompanying us to the Executive Mansion and presenting us to President Lincoln, with the strongest assurances of his confidence in our projMr. Lincoln was much impressed with the novelty and simplicity of the plan of the vessel, and made the remarks and the appointment as stated by Mr. Wheeler. He met us promptly at eleven the next morning at the Navy Department, and told the story as stated, but did not draw or order a contract to be entered into, as he said that he was powerless under the act of Congress authorizing the Board to approve but three plans out of all that should be presented for adoption. Notwithstanding his manifest approval of our scheme, and the fact that Admirals Paulding and Smith most unhesitatingly declared their willingness to give us a contract, if Captain Davis, the third member of the Board, would unite with them in recommending the same to Secretary Welles-we found it utterly impossible to obtain the unanimous consent of the Board; so that we were compelled to leave Washington sadly disappointed, and, so far as we could see, without hope. But we were made glad again when Captain Ericsson consented to go to Washington in person and meet Secretary Welles and the Board; this he did, and in the Secretary's room, with matchless eloquence and magnetism, explained the full merits of our contemplated fighting vessel. He carried the Board and Secretary Welles as if by storm, and then and there the Secretary of the Navy asked the approval of each member of the Board, which was given. Captain Ericsson so explained the proposed plan that they fully comprehended its importance. Secretary Welles gave Captain Ericsson a verbal order to construct the vessel, and requested him to have me come

down the following week and get the contract executed in detail. On verbal order we commenced the construction of the little Monitor, ordering the machinery, iron and material immediately. The next week I went to Washington to secure the promised contract. In the mean time we had become obligated for a large part of the cost of the vessel. But croakers in and out of the Navy Department had been busy at work, and the enthusiasm inspired by Captain Ericsson's grand effort of the previous week had cooled. All the Board would do was to recommend the Secretary to give us the contract as ordered, provided we would execute it with an agreement that the vessel should prove a perfect success, and if she failed of perfect success, she failed as our own property. It is worthy of note here that she was practically our property when she made her gallant fight with the gigantic Merrimac, because she had not been accepted or paid for at the time, although we had received advances on account, as is the custom in all contract work. Just here is where Dr. Wheeler fails to give Messrs. Winslow and Griswold a tithe of the credit due them. They were wealthy and cautious business men, and to execute such a guarantee as I have named cost them a great struggle and much anxiety, as it did the late Daniel Drew of New York, and the Hon. N. D. Sperry of New Haven, our bondsmen on the contract, who signed the same without other consideration or reward save the satisfaction of aiding the Government to save its life.

NEW HAVEN, Conn., January 8, 1885

C. S. BUSHNELL

ORIGIN OF THE NAME "MONITOR'

[We copy the following interesting item from the New York Evening Post of January 10, 1885.]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING POST:

SIR The MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY for this month contains an article by the Rev. Francis B. Wheeler on the "Building of the Monitor," but it does not say how the vessel came by its name or who suggested it. Can you or your readers inform me ?

NEW YORK, January 7

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING POST:

NAVAL OFFICER

SIR The Navy Department at Washington having, shortly before the launch, requested me to suggest an appropriate name for the impregnable turreted steam battery, I addressed a letter to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, saying: "The impregnable and aggressive character of this structure will admonish the leaders of

the Southern rebellion that the batteries on the banks of their rivers will no longer present barriers to the entrance of the Union forces. The iron-clad intruder will thus prove a severe monitor to those leaders. But there are other leaders who will also be startled and admonished by the booming of the guns from the impregnable iron turret. 'Downing Street' will hardly view with indifference this last 'Yankee notion'-this monitor. To the Lords of the Admiralty the new craft will be a monitor, suggesting doubts as to the propriety of completing those four steel ships at $3,500,000 apiece. On these and many similar grounds I propose to name the new battery Monitor."

NEW YORK, January 9

THE RIVER TIBER IN WASHINGTON.

J. ERICSSON

In one of Thomas Mcore's epistles in verse, written from Washington, not far from the year 1803, and addressed to Thomas Hume, Esq., M.D., the oft-quoted line appears:

"And what was Goose Creek once is Tiber now."

The correctness of this allusion of the poet and the existence of such a stream having recently been disputed, Colonel B. S. Ewell, President of the College of William and Mary, writes to Daniel C. Gilman, President of Johns Hopkins University, as follows:

"There was a small stream crossing the Pennsylvania Avenue, a short distance west of the Capitol, at the time when Moore came to this country. In my early days there were four rows of Lombardy poplars in the avenue, between the Capitoland the President's house-one between each pavement and the carriage way, making two; then one about twenty-five feet from each of the first rows, making four; and between the middle rows was a graveled road-bed for wet weather, and between each of the side roads a summer dirt road. Where the graveled part-the center of the avenue crossed the Tiber, was a plain wooden bridge, which was on one occasion within my recollection carried off by a flood. Where each of the summer roads crossed was a ford, both of which I have driven across hundreds, literally, of times, and it was my delight in those days to cross one of them, that on the south side, when the tide was high, and the water comparatively deep, whenever I had young ladies in the vehicle, for the worthy purpose of making them scream and beg, which they did while crossing, scolding vociferously as soon as the carriage reached 'terra firma.' Of all this I am sure-so Moore was right when he said, 'And what was Goose Creek once is Tiber now,' the 'now' being the date of his writing.

"Where the Tiber' was then there is at this day an arch concealing it (the stream), which indeed seems to have much diminished in volume."

WILLIAMSBURG, Va., Dec. 9, 1884

B. S. E.

OLDER THAN THE MOUND BUILDERS

The burying-ground of an ancient race has just been discovered in South-west Virginia. The skeletons are, for the most part, crumbled to dust; yet they can be counted in astounding numbers over the areas of the plantation, showing it to be the cemetery of a nation. A remarkable fact is made known in the search-one of two-fold importance. For, on the one hand, by it the bodies, howsoever decayed, can be easily located. It was found that the human frame after death—even in its particles of dust-remains a conductor of electricity. In the case of no other animate creature is this true. And so the bodies are distinguished.

But of these nameless men and women. Their lives are unchronicled, and unlettered their tombs; their biography is written only in their death. But they are children of promise, about to awaken an interest heretofore unknown. Their burial reveals two customs which alone must place them in historical date, as in enlightenment, far beyond any nation of America as yet brought to public attention; and we dream of the "Lost Arts" and "Ten Tribes " once more. First, they are buried in rectangles-two hundred of them side by side are lying east and west, one hundred of them north and south: thus giving the vast majority their resting-places toward the east. In this they are Christian. May they not be kin to Solomon the Magnificent, and their cemetery planned from the court of the temple? Are they merely Indians? The direction of their burial might so allow it. But one other circumstance remains. Whereas the skull does not class them as "red-men,” they are buried with hands folded across the breast (as no pagans are), plainly awaiting the day when the divinity shall reinhabit the forsaken shrine. And so they slumber on-beneath the tread of men, the trampling of the war-horse and the trail of roaming beasts. Had they been contemporary with any known tribes, their vivid faith and marked customs must have left their impress upon the nomads coming into contact with them. Would science, lynx-eyed, have overlooked the traces of their intercourse?

They are clearly older than Nahnas, Aztecs, Toltecs, Cliff-dwellers, or Moundbuilders. They are children of a higher faith and purer life. The Mexicans, if descendants, are so far removed from them, so enormous is the lapse of time. that the definite faith and history committed to them (by these primal men and women ?) have, in the descent, become the incongruous myths and superstitions that make us wonder whether, at any time in their history, the builders of Ohio mounds and Mexican temples were taught the stories of Babel and the flood.

These new beings may have learned directly those accounts that inspired their souls in death. Indeed, their faith being so evident, it is easily probable that they once peopled the "old world," proving how "God hath made of one (blood) all nations of men."

ROANOKE, Va.

G. P. WATSON