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In 1803, at the age of fourteen, Robert Hay ran away from home to join the Royal Navy, and for the next eight years experienced the trials and tribulations of a sailors life. Intelligent, agile and willing, he became a boy servant to a series of officers, all of whom helped advance his education as was the practice of the day. But the taxing conditions of life onboard he found detestable and he was, after an action off the French coast, sorely tempted to desert but the well known and ruthless treatment of deserters, if caught, deterred him this time. He was then posted to the East Indies where he was badly wounded and nearly lost a leg before returning home after five years with £14 and fou...
Following in the footsteps of Napoleon's army, Europeans invaded Egypt in the early nineteenth century to gaze in wonder at the massive, inscrutable remains of its ancient civilizations. One of these travelers was a twenty-four-year-old Englishman, John Gardner Wilkinson. His copious observations of ancient and modern Egyptian places, artifacts, and lifeways, recorded in such widely read publications as Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians and Handbook for Travellers in Egypt, made him the leading early Victorian authority on ancient Egypt and paved the way for thc scientific study of Egyptology. In this first full-scale biography of Wilkinson (1797-1875), Jason Thompson skillfully p...
From its very inception in 1879 until the twentieth century, the U.S. Geological Survey was embroiled in congressional politics. These early years, Thomas G. Manning shows, heralded the complex relations of contemporary science and government. Born out of rivalry between several scientific parties, the Geological Survey was founded primarily for the advancement of mining west of the Mississippi. Its scope was soon broadened, however, and the Survey became national in character. The concept of government science was challenged by the conservative Cleveland Democrats, but its proponents succeeded in establishing the Survey as a permanent bureau in 1886. Manning traces in detail the careers of ...