(Excerpt from Deck and Port; Or Incidents of a Cruise in t...)
Excerpt from Deck and Port; Or Incidents of a Cruise in the United States Frigate Congress to California: With Sketches of Rio Janeiro, Valparaiso, Lima, Honolulu, and San Francisco ON joining the United States frigate Con gress, fitting for sea, at Norfolk, and destined to the Pacific, I commenced a journal, in which I sketched down the incidents of each day, as they occurred. It was more a whim of the hour, than any purpose connected with the public press. It was a diverting experiment on the monotony of a sea-life; was continued because it had been begun - and the present volume is the result. The streamlet' flows from gathered drops. 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.
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(Excerpt from The Sea and the Sailor: Notes on France and ...)
Excerpt from The Sea and the Sailor: Notes on France and Italy, and Other Literary Remains When the fragments and manuscripts of Mr. Colton were put into the hands of the Editor, it was supposed that an entertaining volume Of Miscellanies could be made up, with little to do on the compiler's part but to select, combine, correct, and put to press. It was soon found, however, that none Of the manuscripts, except portions Of the poems, had ever been at all adjusted, or put into shape for publication. All the diamonds in them were diamonds in the rough, and the gold was either in quartz, or scattered through clay and sand. The work to be done, therefore, was that both Of the miner and the lapidary. The shaft here Opened has proved a productive one, and we think it rare for the merely post humous remains of a literary Naval Chaplain to yield so rich a vein. The part we have called The Sea and the Sailor is made up mainly Of two manuscripts, without a name, in the shape Of Sermons, or Addresses, which it is supposed Mr. Colton was in the habit of using, or having recourse to. 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.
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Walter Colton was born on May 09, 1797 in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. He was the third of twelve children of Deacon Walter Colton and Thankful (Cobb) Colton, and brother of Gardner Quincy Colton. He was descended in the fourth generation from Quartermaster George Colton, a prominent citizen of colonial Massachusetts, who came from England before 1650. When Walter was an infant, his father, a weaver by trade, moved his family to Georgia, a village on Lake Champlain.
As a lad, young Colton was sent to an uncle in Hartford, Connecticut, to learn cabinetmaking. Here, in 1816, he was received into the church and soon thereafter entered the Hartford Grammar School to prepare for college and the ministry. He pursued his studies in Yale College with credit from 1818 to 1822, winning the Berkeleyan Prize in Latin and delivering the valedictory poem at graduation. He then entered Andover Theological Seminary, where he devoted much time to literature, writing a sacred drama and a “News Carriers’ Address” for which a Boston newspaper gave him a two-hundred-dollar prize. Graduating in 1825, he was ordained an evangelist in the Congregational Church.
About 1825 Walter Colton became a professor of moral philosophy and belles-lettres in the Scientific and Military Academy at Middletown, Connecticut. As chapplain, he often preached to the students; his eulogy, delivered at the Academy after the funeral of Commodore Macdonough, is particularly noteworthy. Meanwhile, he wrote several articles for the Middletown Gazette, thus becoming initiated into journalism. Resigning his professorship in 1830, he went, at the request of friends of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to Washington to edit the American Spectator and Washington City Chronicle. This paper had been established to prevent President Jackson from removing the Indians from Georgia, where the Board had a mission. Jackson prevailed, however, and the newspaper came to an end.
Colton sometimes preached at the church where Jackson worshipped. A friendship developed notwithstanding their political differences, and Colton was frequently a White House guest. The President, learning that Colton’s health had been impaired, offered him a naval chaplaincy. This was accepted, and on January 29, 1831, he began his first cruise, on the Vincennes to the West Indies.
Early in 1832 he went to the Mediterranean in the Constellation, Commodore George C. Read. The experiences and observations of this three- years cruise Colton recorded in his Ship and Shore; or Leaves from the Journal of a Cruise to the Levant (1835), and A Visit to Constantinople and Athens (1836). In the spring of 1835 he was assigned to the naval station at Charlestown, Massachusetts where he prepared his manuscripts for publication, ministered to seamen, and often preached in the pulpits of Charlestown and Boston.
He was appointed, in 1837, historiographer and chaplain of the South Sea Surveying and Exploring Squadron, and while in Washington preparing for his new duties he edited the Colonization Herald for several months. The personnel of the exploring expedition had to be reorganized and Colton resigned his post largely on the score of health. Then, early in 1838, he became chaplain of the naval station at Philadelphia, where with the consent of the Navy Department he was also co-editor of the Independent North American. But the change of politics at Washington incident to President Harrison’s death prevented his editing a paper hostile to the new administration, and he then devoted himself exclusively to his chaplaincy.
In the late summer of 1845, he was ordered to sea in the Congress, Commodore Robert F. Stockton, bound for the Pacific. This voyage in the Pacific Squadron flagship afforded Colton material for another book, Deck and Port; or Incidents of a Cruise in the United States Frigate Congress to California (1850). Though a chaplain, he was appointed, July 28, 1846, alcalde, or chief judge, of Monterey and neighboring territory, by the military authorities; and on September 15, the citizens confirmed his appointment with their votes. On his return home in the summer of 1849, he prepared for the press his Three Years in California, 1846-1849 (1850), and tried to regain his health, but after a long period of severe illness, he died in Philadelphia.
During his tenure as Alcalde of Monterey, Colton established "The Californian", the first newspaper to be published in California; built its first school-house, and a public building, which was named “Colton Hall” in his honor; and in a letter to the Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, first publicly announced to the East the discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley. He also wrote numerous sermons and other addresses, newspaper articles, and pamphlets; but his travel books on Constantinople, Greece, and California constituted his most important writings.
(Excerpt from Deck and Port; Or Incidents of a Cruise in t...)
(Excerpt from The Sea and the Sailor: Notes on France and ...)
On June 26, 1844, Colton married a distant relative, Cornelia B. Colton of Philadelphia.
