Page two
This is certainly a toothsome and pictorial dressing for the bare bones of the Antarctic, which challenges only an artist's palette.
It is worth while taking note of Eight's geological observations. The reader should bear in mind that they were the first ever made in the Antarctic and were put down by a man who was in his time reckoned a geologist.
The geological features that these islands present in those highly favored
situations, where the continuous power of the winds has swept bare the
rocks, correspond in a great measure with their desolate and dreary aspect.
They are composed principally of vertical columns of basalt, resting upon
strata of argillaceous conglomerate; the pillars are united in detached
groups, having at their bases sloping banks constructed of materials which
are constantly accumulating by fragments from above. These groups rise
abruptly from the irregularly elevated plains, over whose surface they
are scattered here and there, presenting an appearance to the eye not
unlike some old castle crumbling into ruin, and when situated upon the
sandstone promontories that occasionally jut out into the sea, they tower
aloft in solitary grandeur over its foaming waves; sometimes they may
be seen piercing the superincumbent snow, powerfully contrasting their
deep murky lines with its spotless purity. Ponds of fresh water are now
and then found on the plains, but they do not owe their origin to springs,
being formed by the melting of the snow…
A few rounded pieces of granite are occasionally to be seen lying about, brought unquestionably by the icebergs from their parent hills on some far more southern land, as we saw no rocks of this nature in situ on these islands. In one instance, I obtained a boulder nearly a foot in diameter from one of these floating hills. The action of the waves has produced little or no effect upon the basalt along this coast, as its angles retain all the acuteness of a recent fracture, but when the conglomerate predominates, the mass is generally rounded.
The color of the basalt is generally of a greenish black. The prisms are from four to nine sided, most commonly however of but six, and from three to four feet in diameter; their greatest length in an upright position above the subjacent conglomerate is about eighty feet. Their external surfaces are closely applied to each other, though but slightly united, consequently they are continually falling out by the extensive power of the congealing water among its fissures.
Clusters of these columns are occasionally seen reposing their side in such a manner as to exhibit the surfaces of their base distinctly, which is rough and vesicular. When this is the case they are generally bent, forming quite an arch with the horizon. When they approach the conglomerate for ten or twelve feet, they lose their columnar structure and assume the appearance of a dark-colored flinty slate, breaking readily into irregular rhombi fragments; this fine variety in descending, gradually changes to a greenish color and a much coarser structure, until it passes into a most perfect amygdaloid, the cavities being chiefly filled with quartz, amethyst and chalcedony… The effect produced upon it by the action of the file is very slight; the steel elicits no sparks; the fragments are angular with an imperfect chonchoidal fracture; its structure is coarsely granular and uneven, and is composed essentially of hornblende, feldspar and a greenish substance in grains much resembling epidote; crystals of leucite of a yellow reddish tinge are disseminated throughout the mass whose fractured surfaces strongly reflect the rays of light to the eye; in some places it sensibly affects the needle, owing no doubt to its iron. Veins of quartz frequently traverse the fine variety, some of them containing beautiful amethysts.
The basis rock of these islands, as far as I could discover, is the conglomerate which underlies the basalt. It is composed most generally of two or three layers, about five feet in thickness each, resting one on the other and dipping to the southeast at an angle of from twelve to twenty degrees. These layers are divided by regular fissures into large rhombic tables, many of which appear to have recently fallen out, and now lie scattered all over the sloping sides of the hills, so that the strata when seen cropping out from beneath the basalt present a slightly arched row of angular projections of some considerable magnitude and extent.
The upper portion of this conglomerate for a few feet is of a dirty green color, and appears to be constructed by the passage of the amygdaloid into this rock, the greenish fragments predominating, and they are united to each other principally by zeolite of a beautiful light red, or orange color, together with some quartz and chalcedony.
The minerals embraced in this rock are generally confined to its upper part, where it unites and passes into the incumbent amygdaloid; many of them are also in common with that rock. They consist chiefly of quartz, crystalline and amorphous, amethyst, chalcedony, cachalong, agate, red.jasper, feldspar, zeolite, calcareous spar in rhombic crystals, sulphate of barytes, a minute crystal resembling black spinelle, sulphuret of iron and green carbonate of copper.
The only appearance of an organized remain that I anywhere saw was a fragment of carbonized wood imbedded in this conglomerate. It was in a vertical position, about two and a half feet in length and four inches in diameter: its color is black, exhibiting a fine ligneous structure, the concentric circles are distinctly visible on its superior end, it occasionally gives sparks with steel, and effervesces slightly with nitric acid.
In that very detailed account of the columnar basalts with the sandstone
conglomerate into which they were intruded, and the metamorphism of the
contact zone, Eights first laid hold of structures which have been recorded
again by later observers. The sandstones seem to be the same as that recalled
by Ferrar of the Discovery the "Beacon sandstone" which with
its volcanic sills covers great areas of South Victoria land. Debenham
of the Scott Expedition has written of them. In 1892 Larsen at Seymour
Island just east of Graham Land, found fossils, the first, says Nordenskiold
and after him Amundsen, winner of the South Pole, ever taken in the Antarctic.
But here was Eights more than 60 years before, knocking out fossil wood
from the sandstones of the South Shetlands - wood which, in more than
remote probability, pointed toward that mysterious Gondwana Land which
has been thought to have bound Antarctic America to the Orient during
the most of its geological history. Shackelton found seams of coal and
fossil wood in this Beacon sandstone, of which Schetelig says, "this
belongs to the Upper Devonian or Lower Carboniferous." Now with the
richness of fossil life recently brought home by Anderson and Nordenskiold,
Amundsen, Shackelton and the men of Scott, let us acknowledge the keen-eyed
record and the intelligent interpretations of the Albany naturalist.
Eights was among the first observers to make record of the active volcanoes in the vicinity of these islands, and what was then called Palmer's Land, -- the land, which passing down the years with various designations, has slipped first its American hawser and then its French (Louis Philippe Land), to tie up at last with an Englishman, Graham. He saw and took note of that remarkable half-submerged crater, Deception Island, soon to be much more fully described by the Englishman, Foster, a year or two later.
To the botanical species listed by Eights as composing the flora of these iislands, later years may have brought some additions. Of this I can not be sure, but he says:
The Usnea fasciata Torry is most common. A species of Polytrichum resembling
the alpinum of Lin., one or two lichens and a fucus found in the sea along
the shores - when you add these to an occasional plant of a small species
of avena, you complete the botanical catalogue of the islands.
Then in his picturesque way, Eights takes up for description the water
mammals, the sea-elephant (Phoca leonina; I am using his designations),
the sea-leopard, the fur seal (P. vitulina).
There is also a fourth species, which I have no recollection of ever seeing
the slightest notice of. It is probably not common, as I saw but one;
it was standing on the extremities of its fore-feet (flippers), the head
and chest perfectly erect, abdomen curved and resting an the ground, the
tail was also in an upright position; the animal in this attitude bore
a striking resemblance to the representations we frequently meet with
of the "mermaid," and I think it was undoubtedly one the animals
of this genus that first gave origin to the fable of the maid of the sea.
I regret that I could not obtain a nearer view of this interesting animal.
When I approached within one hundred feet, it threw itself flat and made
rapidly for the sea: it appeared about twelve or fifteen feet in length,
and distinctly more slender in proportion than any of the other species,
so much so that the motion of the body when moving seemed perfectly undulating
of. Some of the seamen had seen them frequently on a former voyage, and
mentioned that they were known among sealers by the name of sea-serpent,
from this circumstance. Some of the teeth were brought to me which had
been picked upon the beach. The crown of the grinders is deeply and singularly
five lobed.
When these [other] animals resort to the shores for the purpose of breeding or shedding their hair, they are in fine condition. During this time they require no food, existing by the absorption of their fatty matter: if killed at this period, you generally find a quantity of small stones in the stomach, swallowed most probably for the purpose of keeping that organ distended and preventing its internal surfaces from adhering to each other. When the season for returning to the sea arrives, these stones are ejected on the beach, and they proceed in search of their ordinary food, which is chiefly penguins. A singular character in the habit of these animals is the faculty they possess of shedding tears when in any way molested. The eyes becoming suffused and the large tear-drops chasing each other in quick succession over their wrinkled faces, creates quite a sympathy in the breast of the beholder.
He also describes the fin whale (Balaena physalis), right whale (B. mysticus),
the grampus, dolphin and porpoise - perhaps a fairly complete statement
of this fauna as now known, though they are now traveling under somewhat
different names.
In present days great interest is attached to the birds of these latitudes, and pretty tales of the whimsical Antarctic penguins have been the delight of several recent writers. Let us see what Eights had to say of them in 1830:
The Aptenodytes patagonim, Gm. (king penguin) is the largest and by far
the most beautiful of the species, and may be seen in great numbers covering
the shores for some considerable extent. They are remarkably clean in
their appearance, not a speck of any kind is suffered for a moment to
sully the pure whiteness of the principal part of their plumage: their
upright position, uniform cleanliness, and beautiful golden yellow cravat,
contrasts finely with the dark background by which they are relieved,
so that the similitude is no unapt one, which compares them to a regiment
of soldiers immediately after parade. The females lay but one egg on the
bare ground, which is rather larger than that of a goose, and of about
equal value as an article of food, but differs a little in shape, being
more tapering at its smaller end. The egg lies between the feet, the tail
sufficiently long to conceal it effectually from the sight. When approached
they move from you with a waddling gait, rolling it along over the smooth
surface of ground, so that a person not acquainted with the fact might
pass through hundreds of them without discovering it. The Spheniscus antarcticus
Shaw (rookery penguin), is more numerous than any of the other species,
assembling together in vast congregations, occupying the smooth strips
of plain for a mile or more in extent; passing through them, they barely
give you sufficient space, picking at your legs, and keeping up a continual
chatter. Their whole appearance as you walk along brings powerfully to
your recollection the story of Gulliver, striding among the Lilliputians.
Sixteen other species of birds are mentioned by him in their Latin dress.
And then. first again in this field, he mentions the Mollusca -- three
species, a Pholas, a Nucula and a Patella, all new to science, he thought.
This account of the South Shetlands was perhaps Dr. Eight's most notable contribution to science, but it was rather general and did not represent the total outcome of his investigations. In connection with it, in the Transactions of the Albany Institute, he described3 under the name Brongniartia trilobitoides a crustacean of which he says:
I was convinced that [it] was nearer to the long lost family of Trilobites
than anything hitherto discovered.
Amos Eaton, the distinguished teacher and Eights's friend, had the same
conviction, for he says of this creature4 when describing the trilobite
genus Brongniartia (a name of his own contrivance):
It is my opinion that Dr. Eights has specimens of two distinct species
of this genus which be collected in the southern ocean.
Eights thought that the species of Eaton's genus belonged to genera already
employed by Jacob Green and DeKay, and so in the mutual scramble to honor
Alexander Brongniart, he appropriated the word Brongniartia for his "living
trilobite." Eights's drawings of his crustacean are beautifully effective
and detailed and to aid in its illumination he adds a picture of the Silurian
trilobite Lichas Boltoni. The living trilobite waited seventy years for
rediscovery. Mr. Hodgson, reporting for the "Discovery" Expedition,
describes and figures it under the name of Serolis trilobitoides.
In another paper, a year or two later, but printed in the same volume of the Albany Institute's Transactions, Eights describes another strange crustacean,5 illuminated by two exquisite plates. This is his Glyptonotus antarctica, an isopod-looking creature, of which its finder, still impressed by his acquaintance with New York State fossils, remarks:
This beautiful crustacean furnishes to us another close approximation
to the long-lost family of the Trilobite.
Doctor Chilton of Christchurch, New Zealand, informs me that this crustacean
was found bv the German Transit of Venus Expedition to South Georgia in
1882-3 and was redescribed by Pfeffer in 1887. "It does not,"
he says, "seem to have been collected by the more recent English,
French and German Antarctic expeditions." Doctor Chilton thinks that
the species is among the specimens brought home by the Scottish Antarctic
Expedition.
Still a third paper with other fine drawings was published by him in 1837 in the first volume of the Journal of the Boston Society of Natural History,6 and gave an account of Decolopoda australis, an unbelievable ten-legged pycnogonid, the first of its kind. Dr. Leon J. Cole, writing to me from Cambridge some years ago, says this:
A ten-legged pycnogonid such as Decolopoda was an unheard of thing until
Eights described this one, and for some reason his discovery appears.
never to have come to the attention of students of the group, for nowhere,
so far as I have been able to find in the writings since his paper was
published, has mention been made of the remarkable fact. When I looked
up Eights's paper a year or two ago I thought at first that a mistake
had been made in the drawing and one too many pairs of legs put on the
animal … I was not so much surprised as I should otherwise have
been when a paper appeared this winter (1905) by Mr. J.V. Hodgson, naturalist
on the Discovery, describing a ten-legged pycnogonid taken by the National
Antarctic Expedition in McMurdo Bay, the ship's winter quarters. Mr. Hodgson
named his form Pentanymphon and says that the presence of a fifth pair
of legs is a "character which separates it from all the pycnogonids
hitherto known." … I then wrote to Mr. Hodgson calling his
attention to Eights's paper, which it appears to have been brought to
his notice in the meantime, and in reply he informs me that among the
Pycnogonida collected by the Scottish Antarctic Expedition he has found
specimens which agree in all essentials with those described long ago
by Eights.
A more recent letter from Dr. Cole from Madison (1915) says that the Scottish
Expedition found fifteen specimens of Eights's species in Scotia Bay,
South Orkneys, and the French Expedition another species of this genus.
The "Voyage of Discovery" and all its results were after all a matter of no slender record, and Eights's hours seem now to have become of rather idle and impecunious ease. In the years from 1835 to 1840 he wrote anonymously for the Zodiac, an Albany magazine of distinctly cultural pretension, articles on the flowers, clouds, weather, insects, birds, mollusca, geology, the lowering of the Hudson River, elevated beaches, turtles, sun-spots, fossils, minerals, constellations, all local observations of a well-stocked mind belonging to an out-of-doors man and naturalist. Somewhere about this time or earlier he must have invented the name "Cocktail" or "Cauda-galli grit" for one of the New York geological formations. It was a name that came into general use and was ascribed to Eights by the official geologists of the state who adopted and continued to use it till it was displaced by the present substitute, "Esopus grit."
But during these years other things were brewing in the line of exploring expeditions. On the Fanning expedition with Eights as a member of scientific corps, had been John N. Reyolds. Reynolds was not a man of science, but a landsman from the Middle West to whom the ancient call of the sea was invincible. Of him and his associates Captain Fanning says, in writing to the Secretary of the Navy, Mahlon Dickerson (1836):
Mr. Reynolds having been one of the individuals in the little American
Exploring Expedition (the first patronized by government) of the brigs
Seraph and Annawan, etc., … two of the gentlemen companions of the
voyage, Messrs. John Frampton Watson, of Philadelphia, and James Eights,
of Albany. These are profound scientific men.
To Reynolds has been given the credit of initiating the sentiment and
leading the campaign which resulted in the organization of the Wilkes
Exploring Expedition. "The father of this project was John N. Reynolds,"
said President Gilman in his "Life of James Dwight Dana," and
at some length he refers to Reynolds's vigorous propaganda on its behalf,
both before and outside of Congress. But, says Secretary Dickerson to
Captain Thomas Ap Catesby Jones (who had been first selected to command
the proposed expedition) in a letter of 1836:
Captain Fanning long since proposed a South Sea exploring expedition and
has been urging it ever since. Ever since the administration of Mr. Madison,
so far as there is merit in originating and urging, this measure is due
to Captain Fanning.
On this new expedition Eights wanted to go, and his experience was beyond
doubt reasonable guaranty of his fitness. And as the plans grew, he filed
with the Secretary of the Navy his application for appointment as geologist.
Besides his experience afloat and ashore, he had the endorsement of Professor
John Torrey, the eminent botanist, and doubtless of Captain Fanning, and
he was duly appointed by Secretary Dickerson, of which appointment he
makes acknowledgment in June, 1837. Then, two months after, the appointees
of the scientific corps got together in Philadelphia and fixed up their
assignments. Reynolds, who was most active in organizing the supercargo,
did not want Eights at all; Torrey had written to Dickerson that he recommend
Eights as geologist; he and all the rest wanted Dana for mineralogist
and geologist and Eights for zoologist, and when the men themselves met
to determine their assignments (this was left by the Secretary to their
own discretion) Eights withdrew his choice and contented himself with
the field of "organic remains." Eights's appointment was notified
to Congress by the Secretary, he was permitted to buy his equipment including
$300 worth of books, and he received pay in advance of sailing until the
appropriation was exhausted. But nevertheless, for reasons which appear
on no records that I have been able to find or that have ever been referred
to, Eights was omitted in the final make-up of the corps of scientific
men. He was not alone in this mishap and others who suffered with him
joined later in an appeal to Congress for remuneration for wasted time
and service.
What brought about this elimination of Eights from the Wilkes Expedition there is none left to tell. To have had his functions restricted by his colleagues to that of paleontologist of a marine expedition seems a reduction to the lowest terms, dangerously close to an elimination, which lay beyond their power. And yet Dana, for whom Eights allowed himself to be effaced, went as "mineralogist" and came back as a zoologist of high distinction. Perhaps Eights, with his experience and versatility, might have done as well, but the American Philosophical Society, in responding to a request of the Secretary of the Secretary of the Navy for a plan of organization of the scientific corps, did not include a paleontologist, and we have just observed that Mr. Reynolds, who was clothed with no small authority in this matter of composing the personnel of the corps, did not approach or recommend Eights. Wherever the cause lay, in disaffection acquired by Reynolds for Eights while on their trip to the Antarctic, in the thinly veiled jealousies common to scientific men of the time7, or perhaps in Eights's personal habits, this crushing of his hopes was the downfall of his career. Whatever justification the Secretary of the Navy may have found for his final action in the case, Eights from this time on ceased to live; though be remained on earth for nearly a half century longer.
The rest of the story is short. There are no records of Albany that tell of Eights's activities during the years that followed. Only the directories show his occasional presence up to 1853. In his contributions to the Zodiac there are passages which show rather intimate acquaintance with Indian customs and life, and Mr. Lawtenslager has intimated that after the sailing of Captain Wilkes, Eights did go out among the western tribes, but if under government auspices I have found no record of it. In 1853 his name appears for the last time in the Albany directory, where he is entered as "draughtsman and geologist." There is no evidence among the very full documents in my possession relating to the Geological Survey that Eights had any official connection with it, and I fancy this title means that he was doing drawing and geology for Dr. Ebenezer Emmons for his geological reports on the agriculture of New York. These were the days when the Taconic controversy was hot and Emmons's "Taconic System" was struggling for life. Emmons was writing his full exposition of it for his "Agriculture of New York," and his colleagues during the days of the first State Geological Survey (1836-1842) had vigorously antagonized the entire proposition. Ebenezer Emmons, Jr., who knew Eights as his father's friend, has told me that Eights had sympathized with and stood by the elder Emmons in these contentions and no such man could have gained employment from the New York State Geologist of 1853. In 1852 Eights published a paper in the Transactions of the Albany Institute on the superficial geology of Albany.8 It contains much that is interesting even to-day regarding the composition and hydrology of the sands and clays of old Lake Albany and gives one of the earliest illustrations of the disrupted clay strata broken into by dragging icebergs.
This is Dr. Eight's last appearance, and of what remained of his life little is to be said further, or little known, and even that is hardly worth the telling. Mr. Lawtenslager, who came to Albany in 1848 and started his business on State Street just below Green, tells me that in the 50's he and Eights had rooms together there. Eights was unmarried and alone, and he was poor - so poor, indeed, that it is clear to me from the very guarded statements of his old companion, that the friendship of the two meant subsistence for one. I have heard, too, of another great disappointment in his life - one that turned his heart sour and kept him a bachelor. So his sands ran on - and he lost his grip - through the sixties and into the seventies; he was an old man now and in his growing feebleness he sought the home of a sister living in Ballston, and there died in 1882, eighty-four years old.
James Eights left his mark - and now let us judge of the size of Hercules from his foot.
FOOTNOTES
1As a literary curiosity evincing a treacherous poetic license in dealing
with prosaic facts of history, the inquisitive reader may be interested
in a prettily written account of "Albany Fifty Years Ago" which
appeared anonymously in Harper's Magazine for 1857 (Vol. XIV.), abundantly
illustrated with woodcuts of the streets of Old Albany and with word pictures
of its residents. These woodcuts were all copies of the sketches made
long before by Eights, though no reference is made to the fact. It is
not a very honest story for the anonymous writer begins it: "I am
an Albany Knickerbocker - a Dutchman of the purest Belgic stock"
- and he was nothing of the sort - and then he describes himself as a
silver-haired man of eighty not many years away from his queue and cocked
hat; while he was actually in his sunny forties and had little if any
knowledge of the scenes he represented. Looking under the woodcuts one
sees the imprint "Lossing and Barritt" and looking again into
the list of authors of such unsigned articles published some years later,
finds this author's name - Benson J. Lossing. The distinguished historian
and engraver was not a citizen of Albany, not a Knickerbocker, but a Quaker
with a little Holland blood, and he should at least have given credit
to Eights for his attractive pictures. But Eights was pillaged all his
life and that is one reason why he got "lost." So Lossing's
stories of the old residents and their homes in 1805 must have been, in
large measure, hearsay, and he seems to have got rather mixed about the
Eights family for he assigns a high gabled house up North Pearl street
a few doors beyond "Webster's Corner" (State and Pearl) to William
Eights who is said by him to have been driven from New York in 1776, after
the British occupation, because of his Whig sentiments. There never was
but one Eights family in Albany and the head of it then was Abraham Eights.
He doubtless came from New York and he may perhaps have lived in this
house, but if he did his son, Dr. Jonathan, built the house we have referred
to far up the street near the Fox Kill.
2Transactions of the Albany Institute, Vol. 2, p.58. The full title is:
"Description of a new Crustaceous Animal found on the Shores of the
South Shetland Islands, with Remarks on their Natural History. By James
Eights, Naturalist to the Exploring Expedition of 1830, and Corresponding
Member of the Albany Institute."
The "Antarctic Manual," prepared for the use of the National Antarctic Expedition in 1901, by George Murray, with preface by Sir Clements Markham, contains a supposedly complete bibliography of the Antarctic, but there is, in a list of 878 titles, no single reference to Eights's papers nor to the expedition to which he was attached; neither to the Annawan or Seraph, the Hersilia or Sheffield, Captain N.B. Palmer, discoverer of Palmer's land in 1820, is confused with J.C. Palmer, whose title to fame seems to lie in a mariner's song written by him in 1868; Titian Peale, of the Wilkes Expedition, is called Titus Peale, and so on. Contemporary reviews in American scientific and literary magazines ignored Eights entirely though steeping their pages with the work of other explorers (vide, e.g., Silliman's Journal, Knickerbocker Magazine, North American Review).
3As cited above.
4"Geological Textbook," 2d ed., 1832.
5"Of a New Animal Belonging to the Crustacea Discovered in the Antarctic
Sea."
6"Description of a New Animal Belonging to the Arachnides of Latreille;
Discovered in the Sea along the shores of the New South Shetland Islands,"
p. 203.
7In a notable example of the bumptious democracy of the times, the series of anonymous letters publicly addressed by J.N. Reynolds to Secretary Dickerson on the subject of the expedition, are hardly to be surpassed for personal indelicacy, disrespect for high place and rudeness of address, and they were assembled and printed by their author over his own name. VOL. II.-14.
8"Observations on the Geological Features of the Post Tertiary Formation of the City of Albany and Its Vicinity" (Vol. 2).
