January 1846
Charles Lyell (1797–1875), although born to privilege, earned his place as one of the most eminent men of science in the nineteenth century. After Oxford, he studied for the law and was admitted to the bar. His true interest, however, was geology, which he had first studied as a boy on his family’s estates in the south of England and in Scotland before attending lectures at Oxford given by prominent scientists. Consequently, he left the law and devoted his professional life to science, especially to geology. His Principles of Geology, which was first published in three volumes in 1830 and which had eleven editions in Lyell’s lifetime, first established his scientific credentials. He was a mentor of Charles Darwin, subscribed to a belief in evolution, but had difficulty accepting natural selection as the force behind evolution. In time, Lyell left the liberal wing of the Church of England for Unitarianism.
Lyell visited the United States four times, where he was received as one of the most famous and influential scientists of his day. He lectured to American audiences of up to three thousand. Therefore, when he visited Montgomery in 1846, he was already famous; two years later he was knighted.
He planned his trips with great care. His steady temperament, accurate observations, and the luxury of checking his judgment against his wife’s enabled Lyell to produce one of the best accounts of mid-nineteenth century America, although he had not initially intended to publish his travel accounts. His interests in the South focused on geology and soil erosion, but also on public opinion, morals, and manners. His view on slavery was not so harsh as most of his non-Southern contemporaries; in fact, he compared Southern slaves with Northern free blacks. For this view, he was criticized by anti-slavery spokesmen, such as Frederick Douglas, who believed Lyell was too influenced by his slave-holding hosts.
Sir Charles served as a scientific adviser to the British government and worked with Prince Albert on the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851. He was elected a member of the Royal Society, and he received the Geological Society’s highest award. In 1864, he was made a baronet. Also indicative of his prominence is the fact that he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Today a mountain in Tasmania bears his name, as does a crater on the moon and another on Mars.
Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America, 2 vols. (London; John Murray, 1849), II: 41–44.
We at length arrived at Montgomery [by stage from Columbus to Chehaw and thence by rail], on the river Alabama, where I staid a few days to examine the geology of the neighbourhood. From the high ground near the town there is a distant view of the hills of the granitic region around Wetumpka. But the banks of the river at Montgomery are composed of enormous beds of unconsolidated gravel, thirty feet thick, alternating with red clay and sand, which I at first supposed to be tertiary, from their resemblance to strata near Macon and Augusta in Georgia. The fossil shells, however, of the accompanying marls (Inoceramus and Rostellaria arenarum), soon convinced me that they belonged to the cretaceous formation. About three miles south of the town there is a broad zone of calcareous marl, constituting what is called a prairie, or cane-brake country, bare of natural wood, and where there is so great a want of water, that it was at first difficult for settlers to establish themselves upon it, until, by aid of the Artesian auger, they obtained an abundant supply from a depth of 300, and often 500 feet, derived from the underlying gravelly and sandy beds. Farther from the outcrop of these gravelly beds borings have been made 800 feet deep without success. The temperature of the water was found to increase in proportion to the depth of the wells. A proprietor told me he had found it very difficult to get trees to grow on the prairie land, but he had succeeded, with great care, in rearing a few mulberries.
The common name for the marlite, of which this treeless soil is composed, is “rotten limestone.” I found many lumps on the surface, much resembling white chalk, and containing shells of the genera, Inoceramus, Baculite, Ammonite, Hippurite, and that well-known fossil of the English chalk, Ostrea vesicularis.
In the market-place of Montgomery, I saw an auctioneer selling slaves, and calling out, as I passed, “Going for 300 dollars.” The next day another auctioneer was selling horses in the same place. Nearly the same set of negroes, men, women, and boys, neatly dressed, were paraded there, day after day. I was glad to find that some settlers from the North, who had resided here many years, were annoyed at the publicity of this exhibition. Such traffic, they say, might as well be carried on quietly in a room. Another resident, who had come from Kentucky, was forming a party, who desire to introduce into Alabama a law, like one now in force in Kentucky, that no negroes shall henceforth be imported. By that statute, the increase of slaves has, he says, been checked. A case had lately occurred, of a dealer who tried to evade the law by bringing forty slaves into Kentucky, and narrowly escaped being fined 600 dollars for each, but has the ingenuity to get off by pretending that he was ignorant of the prohibition, and was merely passing through with them to Louisiana. “By allowing none to come in, while so many are emigrating to the West and Texas, we may hope,” he said, “very soon to grow white.”
Every evening, as nine o’clock, a great bell, or curfew, tolls in the market-place of Montgomery, after which no coloured man is permitted to be abroad without a pass. This custom, has, I understand, continued ever since some formidable insurrections, which happened many years ago, in Virginia and elsewhere. I was glad to find that the episcopal clergyman at Montgomery had just established a Sunday school for negroes. I also hear that a party in this church, already comprising a majority of the clergy, are desirous that the negro congregations should be represented in their triennial conventions, which would be an important step towards raising the black race to a footing of equality with the whites. In these times when many here are entertaining a hostile feeling towards Great Britain, and when the government is lending itself to the excitement, I find the ministers of the Episcopal Church peculiarly free from such spirit, and cherishing a desire for peace and a friendly disposition towards the English. The Methodists had just been holding a protracted meeting in Montgomery, and such is the effect of sympathy and of the spirit of competition, that the religious excitement had spread to all the other sects.
. . . Wednesday, Jan. 28. 1846.—The steamer Amaranth was lying at the bluff at Montgomery on the Alabama river, and was advertised to sail for Mobile, a navigation of more than 300 miles, at ten o’clock in the morning.