Excerpt from Address on the Subject of a Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas: Delivered in the Hall of Representatives on the Evening of April 3, 1836 Believing that it is the sacred duty of every member of society to contribute, according to his possessions, to the general treasury of knowledge, I have come, on this occasion, to cast in my mite; happy that I have something to offer, and humble that the offering is of no greater value. At an early period of my life I imbibed a relish, perhaps acci dentally, for books of voyages and travels, when I had not as yet seen the ocean. Though a dweller in the western forests, I could reason from effects to causes, and needed only the roughly sketched history of the early settlement of our country to convince 'me, that the maritime enterprise of our ancestors was an important element in the foundation of our subsequent power; and that whatever tended to increase the stimulus to exertion, and extend the field of commercial research, was to add more to our national resources, than to discover mines of diamonds, or heap our trea suries with coined gold. The analogy of the sister branches, agriculture and manufactures have come to our aid; and if when fields are run out, the farmer is obliged to till new ones; and if when markets fail, the ingenuity of the manufacturer is tasked to find others, surely be who can indicate to our rapidly increasing marine a new and untried sea, or an undiscovered island, where enterprise may be enriched, and the country acquire a footing, deserves well of his fellow-men. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.