He taught himself the Hebrew and German, with the aid only of grammars
and lexicons; and, with the assistance of instructors, the reading of
French. His assiduity, his love of method, the great value he attached
to time, and his perseverance in whatever study or research he
undertook, were indeed indomitable, and serve to prove how far they will
carry the mind, and how much surer tests they are of ultimate usefulness
and attainment, than the most dazzling genius without these moral props.
Self-dependent, self-acting, and self-taught, it is apprehended that few
men, with so little means and few advantages, have been in so peculiar a
sense the architect of their own fortunes.

He commenced writing for the newspapers and periodicals in 1808, in
which year he also published a poetic tribute to a friend, which excited
local notice, and was attributed to a person of literary celebrity. For,
notwithstanding the gravity of his studies and researches, he had
indulged an early poetic taste for a series of years, by compositions of
an imaginative character, and might, it should seem, have attained
distinction in that way. His remarks in the "_Literary and Philosophical
Repertory_," on the evolvement of hydrogen gas from the strata of
Western New York, under the name of Burning Springs, evinced an early
aptitude for philosophical discussion. In a notice of some
archaeological discoveries made in Hamburgh, Erie County, which were
published at Utica in 1817, he first denoted the necessity of
discriminating between the antique French and European, and the
aboriginal period in our antiquities; for the want of which
discrimination, casual observers and discoverers of articles in our
tumuli are perpetually over-estimating the state of ancient art.

About 1816 he issued proposals, and made arrangements to publish his
elaborated work on vitreology, which, so far as published, was
favorably received.

In 1817 he was attracted to go to the Valley of the Mississippi. A new
world appeared to be opening for American enterprise there. Its extent
and resources seemed to point it out as the future residence of
millions; and he determined to share in the exploration of its
geography, geology, mineralogy and general ethnology, for in this latter
respect also it offered, by its curious mounds and antiquities and
existing Indian tribes, a field of peculiar and undeveloped interest.

He approached this field of observation by descending the Allegh