Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[692] The vessel was commanded by Captain (now Commodore) Philip C. Johnson, whose courtesy and kindness made the Hassler a floating home to the guests on board. So earnest and active was the sympathy felt by him and his officers in the scientific interests of the expedition, that they might be counted as a valuable additional volunteer corps. Among them should be counted Dr. William White, of Philadelphia, who accompanied the expedition in a partly professional, partly scientific capacity.

The hopes Agassiz had formed of this expedition, as high as those of any young explorer, were only partially fulfilled. His enthusiasm, though it had the ardor of youth, had none of its vagueness. In a letter to Mr. Peirce, published in the Museum Bulletin at this time, there is this passage: ‘If this world of ours is the work of intelligence and not merely the product of force and matter, the human mind, as a part of the whole, should so chime with it, that from what is known it may reach the unknown. If this be so, the knowledge gathered should, within the limits of error which its imperfection renders unavoidable, enable us to foretell what we are likely to find in the deepest abysses of the sea.’ He looked, in short, for the solution of special