Another interesting monument on this avenue is the lofty cenotaph of white marble to the memory of four gallant fellows who went out with Lieutenant Wilkes's exploring expedition in 1839, and never came home again. Two of them, Passed Midshipman James W. Reid and Frederic A. Bacon, were on the plot-boat, the Seagull which was one of the vessels of the exedition, on the 28th of April, 1839 she sailed for Valparaiso from Orange Bay, near Cape Horn. She was never heard from, but a frightful tempest which arose that night left little doubt as to her fate. The other two officers commemorated by this monument, Lieutenant Joseph A. Underwood and Midshipman Wilkes Henry, went ashore at Malolo, one of the Fiji Islands, July 24, 1840, and were treacherously slain by savages. They gave their lives freely while covering the retreat of their men, all of whom escaped. Their bodies were recovered and were interred in a neighboring island, To their memory and that of the gallant officers who were lost off Cape Horn, their associates, the officers and scientific corps of the expedition, erected this noble shaft. There it has stood for more than half a century, telling the story of one of those brave deeds of adventure, daring and sacrifice with which the annals of the American navy are full, The monument is beautifully proportioned, and each side is ornamented with a festoon of roses in relief, The inscriptions are brief and appropriate,
      A tragedy of a different type, but of about the same period, is commemorated by a less imposing pyramidal shaft, which stands in a triangular lot, at the intersection of Spruce and Fir Avenues. This shaft, which is of marble, with a medallion portrait in bronze, is to the memory of Rev. Charles Turner Torrey, one of the earliest martyrs to the anti-slavery cause, He was a native of Scituate and a graduate of Yale. In 1844, he was arrested at Baltimore, charged with aiding slaves to escape. Convicted of that crime by the Baltimore city court, he was sentenced to the penitentiary for six years. There, two years later, he died in prison, of consumption induced by the rigorous treatment to which he had been subjected. Three months before he died, he wrote in a letter: "It is better to die in prison with the peace of God in our breasts than to live in freedom with a polluted conscience," To that lofty principle he was true, and on his deathbed he refused a pardon at the hands of the governor of Maryland, This monument, erected to his memory the friends of human freedom, adds to its recital of his heroism the following lines, - prophetic when they were