Silas Weatherscout

Have you ever heard of Silas Weatherscout? It's okay if you haven't, Latigo Flint doesn't judge. (And besides, few people have.)

Silas Weatherscout was a European explorer/marine biologist, who traveled to the New World in the late 1600's. He soon saw the bountiful promise this vast, wild land offered and he immediately set out to find the "Midwest Passage", the connected system of waterways that he theorized must surely bisect the continent.

One of Silas' early journal entries:

"Breathtaking this mighty land of unsniffed forest and hill. Doubly sweet is the day whose fast we break with untaxed pudding."

Weatherscout's dream was simple: The traditional beasts of burden - oxen, horse and cow may have been okay for the dreary and crumbling old world, but most unfit for this new Eden. According to Silas, the perfect animal partner for men in the New World would be dolphins and porpoises.

Again from his journal:

"The plodding oxen tills the wheat and corn fields by day only to eat hungrily of grain at dusk. But the porpoise and dolphin may swim the canals wearing pulley system harness attached to plow, while feasting upon fish and freshwater mussel that would have otherwise gone undetected."

In May of 1692, Silas started up the Potomac from the Chesapeake Bay in a rowboat, towing several large crates filled with dolphins and porpoises. Early on it became clear his expedition wasn't to be without hardship. From his journal:

"Strangely, the river has yet to flow inward as my calculations insist it must. Its direction remains constant toward the sea and my rate of travel remains a disappointing quarter mile a day. Growing restless are my aquatic friends. Musket fire delays their mutiny."

A month later, French trappers report seeing an emaciated, badly sunburned man sprawled in the bottom of a tiny rowboat that raced toward the ocean much faster than the river flows.

A journal entry from approximately the same period:

"I have grown rather fond of the little spotted female and I believe she of me. I have given much thought to inviting her into the boat with me."

A Nova Scotian whaling ship bound for the waters off Iceland would rescue Silas several weeks later. By all accounts he had gone quite mad.

Silas Weatherscout eventually made a full recovery... physically. Five years later however, he was killed by outraged Iroquois braves while trying to establish a brothel exclusively featuring female dolphins and porpoises on the eastern shore of what is now called Lake Ontario.