STATUE OF MAURY OVER THE MAIN ENTRANCE OF THE DEUTSCHE SEEWARTE (METEOROLOGICAL STATION OF THE GERMAN ADMIRALTY) IN HAMBURG.] With characteristic energy Maury pressed the question upon the notice of the public. Lieutenant Lewis Herndon’s report of his exploration of the Amazon Valley was submitted to Congress on January 26, 1853, and soon afterwards there appeared in the _National Intelligencer_ and the _Union_ of Washington at irregular intervals seven articles signed “Inca”, in which the commercial, mineral, and agricultural potentialities of the Amazon region were painted in glowing colors. The free navigation of the Amazon River was demanded of Brazil by Maury in these “Inca” articles; and at the meeting of the Memphis Convention in June of the same year resolutions were adopted urging the same proposition. These resolutions were then reported to the House of Representatives in the form of a “Memorial of Lieutenant Maury in behalf of the Memphis Convention in favor of the free navigation of the Amazon River”. This propaganda made at first a very unfavorable impression on the Brazilians, and caused them to suspect that a scheme of annexation by the United States was the real reason for the insistence on the opening of their great river to free navigation. One Brazilian newspaper asserted that “this nation of pirates, like those of their race, wish to displace all the people of America who are not Anglo-Saxon”. So strong was the feeling thus aroused that the House Committee on Foreign Affairs reported on February 23, 1855 that further action on the Maury memorial was for the present inexpedient. However, at last, on December 7, 1866, an agreement was signed providing that after September 7 of the following year the Amazon should be free to the merchant ships of all nations, as far as the frontier of Brazil. Later even the Brazilians themselves conceded the beneficial influence of Maury in bringing this about. “After the publication in the _Correio Mercantil_ of his (Maury’s) memorial”, wrote the Brazilian historian, Joaquim Nabuco,[10] “and his description of the Amazon region, locked up from the world by a policy more exclusive than Japan’s or Dr. Francia’s, the cause of the freedom of navigation was triumphant. Tavares Bastos himself received from the book by Maury the patriotic impulse which converted him into a champion of this great cause”. Events moved too swiftly, however, in the United States for the development of the Amazon Valley to play any part in the settling of the slavery question.