Gregory Curtis Read Online Free Page B

translated into a number of languages (although not English), thus spreading his fame throughout Europe. His work inbotany earned him membership in learned societies, as did his philological studies on the languages of Oceania.
    Tall and muscular, he flaunted his robustness and endured the most demanding physical hardships almost with relish. Although his crews were loyal to him because he was scrupulously fair, he was too awkward socially to be friendly with them. He usually spent evenings at sea in his cabin poring over botanical specimens and writing in his journal. By the time he became an admiral, he would wear his uniform only when in port; otherwise he was unconcerned with his physical appearance. An officer who sailed with him wrote later that he was “a tall untidy man, without stockings or cravat, wearing torn duck trousers, and unbuttoned twill coat, the whole outfit crownedby an old straw hat full of holes.” When he spoke, he made a whistling sound through his teeth.
    Jules Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville, by Jerome Cartellier
( illustration credit 1.3 )
    D’Urville’s unconcern for appearances concealed the driving motivation of his life: a desire for fame. Born in Normandy in 1790, he lost his father seven years later. His formidable mother made the fragile boy spend hours outside in the coastal chill without a coat. She thought that would toughen him up, and evidently it did. She was repelled by affection and insisted that her son address her only in the most formal and polite language. When he was ten, d’Urville asked an uncle if any famous men came from the little town in Normandy where he was born. The answer was no. “I promised myself,” d’Urville wrote,“to work twice as hard to place my name on the wings of fame. Habitually plunged in such thoughts, I had acquired an aloof and serious manner, unusual at my age.”
    He had joined the crew of the
Chevrette
in 1819. Although d’Urville was married with a son who was going on three, he chafed at the shore duty that had been his lot since theBourbons’restoration to the French throne. The
Chevrette
had a mission to study the islands of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. D’Urville was to be one of the scientists on board, his subjects being botany, entomology, and archeology. As always he performed these duties with immense energy and enthusiasm. His immediate superior officer,Lieutenant Amable Matterer, later wrote that “whenever the ship was at anchor, M. Dumont d’Urville left very early almost every day and did not return till after sunset, laden with all sorts of plants that he carefully classified and pressed. He would come aboard tired out but elated to have found some rare plants that had escaped the notice [of previous explorers].”
    While the
Chevrette
was anchored atMelos, d’Urville and Matterer made excursions across the island. On April 19, after the ship had been in harbor for three days, they made the hour’s climb of the large, steep hill overlooking the harbor to Castro, the main village on the island.
    When they arrived at the village itself, it hardly seemed worth the effort of the climb. The houses, two stories tall with whitewashed sides and flat roofs, all looked alike. A set of bare stairs without any rail led up one wall from the street to the second story, where there was a flat terrace. During the day women sat on the terrace spinning cotton thread and often, if eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travelers are to be believed, looking provocatively at passersby.
    Inside the houses the first floor was a combination stable, chicken roost, and pigsty. Garbage and muck from both humans and animals were thrown into the street, making it impossible to walk through town without fouling one’s boots. The smell was nauseating. And fleas were everywhere. “The quantity ofthe insects is truly extraordinary,” one traveler wrote. “One is covered and devoured. They spread over the head and slide into the