NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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1 William Galbraith, Esq. was a teacher of Mathematics in Edinburgh, Scotland. In this he seems to have been very much a self-starter, for I have been able to obtain zero biographical detail as to birth, death, institutional involvement, etc. I am unable to ascertain, for instance, what would be most plausible, that his M.A. was from the University of Edinburgh. Nothing seems to exist beyond the publication record. NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project William Galbraith

2 1834 William Galbraith, M.A. s MATHEMATICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL TABLES: FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS, PRACTICAL ASTRONOMERS, SURVEYORS, ENGINEERS, AND NAVIGATORS; PRECEDED BY AN INTRODUCTION, CONTAINING THE CONSTRUCTION OF LOGARITHMIC AND TRIGONOMETRICAL TABLES, PLANE AND SPHERICAL TRIGONOMETRY, THEIR APPLICATION TO NAVIGATION, ASTRONOMY, SURVEYING, AND GEODETICAL OPERATIONS, WITH AN EXPLANATION OF THE TABLES, ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS PROBLEMS AND EXAMPLES... (2d Edition, greatly enlarged and improved; Edinburgh: Published by Oliver & Boyd, Tweeddale Court; Simpkin & Marshall, and J.W. Norie & Co., London. 1834). WM. GALBRAITH S TABLES Francis Joseph Grund edited THE MERCHANT S ASSISTANT AND MERCANTILE INSTRUCTER. CONTAINING A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE MONEYS, COINS, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES OF THE PRINCIPAL TRADING NATIONS AND THEIR COLONIES; TOGETHER WITH THEIR VALUES IN UNITED STATES CURRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. TRANSLATED FROM THE SEVENTH EDITION OF [GEORG THOMAS] FLÜGEL; WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS FROM THE WORKS OF KELLY, NELCENERECHTER, KRUSE, MC CULLOCH, AND OTHERS (Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co.). MERCANTILE INSTRUCTER In India, 19 th century, a nominal unit of mass used for the trade in pearls, which were priced per chow. In Madras, the real weight was measured in mangelins (about gram). To calculate the number of chows, square the weight in mangelins of a group of pearls. Take ¾ of the result, and divide by the number of pearls. Multiply the result by the price per chow (Grund suggests 96 shillings sterling per chow). In Madras the chow was divided into 16 parts. In Bombay, the real weight was the tank. To calculate the number of chows, square the number of tanks, multiply by 330, and divide by the number of pearls. There the chow was divided as follows: Grund s AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON GEOMETRY: SIMPLIFIED FOR BEGINNERS NOT VERSED IN ALGEBRA, PART I, CONTAINING PLANE GEOMETRY, WITH ITS APPLICATION TO THE SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS (Boston: Charles J. Hendee, and G.W. Palmer and Company) TREATISE ON GEOMETRY (Evidently we do not know for sure, which volume or volumes of this geometry text Henry Thoreau owned.)

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4 1847 The surveying text in Henry Thoreau s library was the 15th edition, revised, of Professor Charles Davies, LL.D. s ELEMENTS OF SURVEYING, AND NAVIGATION; WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE INSTRUMENTS AND THE NECESSARY TABLES (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., No. 51 John Street, 1847; 359 pages). This copy is presently in the rare books collection of the Concord Free Public Library. Google Books has provided electronic text of this 15th edition but in a printing dated the previous year presumably this would have been identical except for the date on the cover page. CHARLES DAVIES, LL.D. Accession No : Signature of Henry D. Thoreau on t.p. Extensive pencil annotations on back lining leaf. Presented by Sophia E. Thoreau, Bound in calf; black spine label. This was one of the most widely used books on surveying during the middle of the 19th century and Thoreau annotated his copy with notes from William Galbraith s MATHEMATICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL TABLES on particular mathematical problems. In his journal entry of June 9, 1850 he would list nine books recommended by Galbraith in regard to magnetic variation in compass needles. Thoreau s awareness of the importance of magnetic variation is clear from his advertising broadside, on which he indicates that he notes the variation of the compass in order that his survey can be verified by others. During the early 1850s he makes references in his journal and field notebooks to books and articles on this subject, and to observations he was making of compass needle variations in the vicinity of Concord For a listing of the various surveying books used in the 19th Century in America, refer to: THE UZES LIST OF BOOKS

5 1850 April 26, Friday: In North Africa, Heinrich Barth viewed Ederli. Eventually, when his account of this would arrive at Stacy s Circulating Library in Concord, Henry Thoreau would be reading about this, and looking at this picture. Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the translation by the Reverend J. Stephenson of THE SANHITA OF THE SAMA VEDA, and Rammohan Roy s collection of extracts from the early vedas titled TRANSLATION OF SEVERAL PRINCIPAL BOOKS, PASSAGES, AND TEXTS OF THE VEDS, AND OF SOME CONTROVERSIAL WORKS ON BRAHMUNICAL THEOLOGY. INDIA Thoreau also checked out William Galbraith, M.A. s MATHEMATICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL TABLES: FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS, PRACTICAL ASTRONOMERS, SURVEYORS, ENGINEERS, AND NAVIGATORS; PRECEDED BY AN INTRODUCTION, CONTAINING THE CONSTRUCTION OF LOGARITHMIC AND TRIGONOMETRICAL TABLES, PLANE AND SPHERICAL TRIGONOMETRY, THEIR APPLICATION TO NAVIGATION, ASTRONOMY, SURVEYING, AND GEODETICAL OPERATIONS, WITH AN EXPLANATION OF THE TABLES, ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS PROBLEMS AND EXAMPLES... (2d Edition, greatly enlarged and improved; Edinburgh: Published by Oliver & Boyd, Tweeddale Court; Simpkin & Marshall, and J.W. Norie & Co., London. 1834). WM. GALBRAITH S TABLES

6 April 1850: The Hindoos are more serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews they have perhaps a purer more independent and impersonal knowledge of God Their religious books describe the first inquisitive & contemplative access to God the Hebrew bible a conscientious return a grosser & more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free & fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance It is shocking & passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are the chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness & gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach & discourse on forbidden themes is admirable What extracts from the vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher & purer luminary which describes a loftier curve through a purer stratum free from particulars simple universal It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out wading through some far summer stratum of the sky. The Vedant teaches how by forsaking religious rites the votary may obtain purification of mind. One wise sentence is worth the state of Massachusetts, many times over. The Vedas contain a sensible account of God. The religion & phil. of the Hebrews are those of a wilder & ruder tribe wanting the civility & intellectual

7 refinements & subtlety of the Hindoos. Man flows at once to God as soon as the channel of purity, physical, intellectual & moral, is open. with the Hindoos virtue is an intellectual exercise not a social & practical one It is a knowing not a doing. I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another I have no sympathy with the bigotry & ignorance which make transient & partial & puerile distinctions between one man s faith or form of faith & anothers as christian & heathen I pray to be delivered from narrowness partiality exaggeration bigotry. To the philosopher all sects all nations are alike. I like Brahma Hare Buddha the Great spirit as well as God. June 9, Sunday: Materials for Higher Laws as shown on the following screens: [following screens]

8 WALDEN: The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. That in which men differ from brute beasts, says Mencius, is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully. Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind s approximation to God. Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace. How happy s he who hath due place assigned To his beasts and disaforested his mind! * * * Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev ry beast, And is not ass himself to all the rest! Else man not only is the herd of swine, But he s those devils too which did incline Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse. All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, thought it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.

9 I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject, I care not how obscene my words are, but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles. INDIA June 9th: Walden is still rising though the rains have ceased and the river has fallen very much. I see the pollen of the pitch pine now beginning to cover the surface of the pond. Most of the pines at the NNW end have none, & on some there is only one pollen bearing flower. There are but few pitch pines about the {MS torn} {One-third page missing} It needs to be very buoyant to reach the fertile flower which is often at a great distance. I saw a striped snake which the fire in the woods had killed, stiffend & partially blackened by the flames with its body partly coiled up & raised from the ground & its head still erect as if ready to dart out its tongue & strike its foe. No creature can exhibit more venom than a snake even when it is not venomous strictly speaking. The fire ascended the oak trees very swiftly by the moss which fringed them. There is a large pitch pine 60 or {MS torn} feet high standing alone on {Two-fifths page missing} tree appears to be still flourishing. This kind of girdling does not kill the tree. It has a singular effect on us when we hear the geologist apply his terms to Judea speak of limestone and blocks of trap & conglomerate; boulders of sandstone and quartz there. Or think of a chemical analysis of the water of the Dead Sea The pitch & white pine is two years or more maturing its seed. Certain rites are practised by the Smrities (among the Hindoos) at the digging of wells. In early times the Brahmans, though they were the legislators of India possessed no executive power, and lived in poverty, yet they were for the most part independent and respected. Galbraith s Math. Tables Edinburg 1834 For descriptions of instruments he refers to Jones edition of Adam s Geom. & Graphical Essays, Biot s Traite d Astronomie Physique, Base du Systeme Metrique, Woodhouse s, Vince s, and Pearson s Treatises of Astronomy. For problems connected with trigonometrical surveying to the third vol. of Hutton s Course of Math. by Dr O. Gregory Baron Zach s Work on the Attraction of Mts, the Base du Systeme de Metrique Decimal, and Puissant s Geodesie. Olive or red seems the fittest color for a man a denizen of the woods. The pale white man I do not wonder that the African pitied him. The white-pine cones which are earlier than the pitch are now two inches long curved sickle-like from the top most branches reminding you of the tropical trees which bear their fruit at their heads. The life in us is like the water in the river, it may rise this year higher than ever it was known to before and flood the uplands even this may be the eventful year & drown out all our muskrats There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book Most men probably have lived in two or three. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher. My imagination, my love & reverence & admiration, my sense of the miraculous is not so excited by any event as by the remembrance of my youth. Men talk about bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head Wo to him who wants a companion for he is unfit to be the companion even of himself. We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods. When we cease to sympathise with and to be personally related to men, and begin to be universally related then we are capable of inspiring others with the sentiment of love for us.

10 I have been into a village and there was not a man of a large soul in it In what respect was it better than a village of prairie dogs? We hug the earth how rare we mount! how rarely, we climb a tree! We might get a little higher methinks That pine would make us dizzy. You can see the Mts from it as you never did before. Shall not a man have his spring as well as the plants? The halo around the shadow is visible both morning & evening. After this and some other fires in the woods which I helped to put out A more effectual system by which to quell them occurred to me. When the bell rings hundreds will run to a fire in the woods without carrying any implement and then waste much time after they get there either in doing nothing or what is worth than nothing, having come mainly out of curiosity it being as interesting to see it burn as to put it out. I thought that in every country town it would be well if forty or 50 men should enroll themselves in to a company for this purpose & elect suitable officers. The town should provide a sufficient no of rakes hoes and shovels which it should be the duty of certain of the company to convey to woods in a wagon together with the drum on the first alarm people being unwilling to carry their own tools for fear they will be lost. When the captain or one of the numerous vice captains arrives having inspected the fire & taken his measures let him cause the roll to be called however the men may be engaged & just take a turn or two with his men to form them into sections & see where they are then he can appoint & equip his rake-men & his hoe men & his bough men & drop them at the proper places always retaining the drummer & a scout and when he has learned through his scout that the fire has broken out in a new place he by beat of drum can take up one or two men of each class as many as can be spared and repair to the scene of danger One of my friends suggests instead of the drum some delicious music adding that then he would come. It might be well to refresh the men when wearied with work & cheer them on their return. Music is the proper regulator So far in the east among the Yezidis, or Worshippers of the Devil so called, and the Chaldaeans &c you may hear these remarkable disputations on doctrinal points Any reverence even for a material thing proceeds from an elevation of character Layard speaking of the reverence for the sun exhibited by the Yezidis or Worshippers of the Devil says They are accustomed to kiss the object on which its first beams fall; and I have frequently, when travelling in their company at sunrise, observed them perform this ceremony. For fire, as symbolic, they have nearly the same reverence; they never spit into it, but frequently pass their hands through the flame, kiss them, & rub them over their right eyebrow, or some-times over the whole face. Who taught the oven bird [Seiurus aurocapillus] to conceal her nest? It is on the ground yet out of sight. What cunning there is in nature! No man could have arranged it more artfully for the purposes of concealment Only the escape of the bird betrays it. MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project William Galbraith

11 COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this read-only computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace resulting in navigation problems allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: November 10, 2014

12 ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

13 Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary writerly process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.