historical references

- african american servant (jupiter) and his dialect (little english and spanish
) it was uncommon to give voice to negros characters, poe ambitious and realist
tried.
- captain kidd or william the kidd (1645-1701) scottish sailor tried for piracy.
(also quote by mark tain)
- scaraboeus - latin name for species- normally used by scientific etnological t
axonomy. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) its connected with the assumption that Lengra
nd is a naturalist.
- historical setting: The time is the early 1840s. The action takes place in Sou
th Carolina on Sullivan's Island and on the mainland, near Charleston. At one en
d of the island is Fort Moultrie(built in 1776), a real-life military outpost co
nstructed to protect Charleston. It was one of four such installations. The othe
r three were Castle Pinckney (1810, but was a rock), Fort Sumter, and Fort Johns
on. Beginning in November 1827, Poe spent a year at Fort Moultrie after enlistin
g in the U.S. Army the previous May.
Poe's character Legrand's explanation of his ability to solve the cipher is very
like Poe's explanation in "A Few Words on Secret Writing".[7]
Lengrand represents the "ratiocination" traces to "ratio," Latin for "reason" or
"computation".
euphoria and melancholy and worries that the continued pressure of misfortune ha
d, at length fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. But Legrand's reason is in
tact (reason is not only order but feeling)
He or she may then make other substitutions, based on a character's frequency of
occurrence, with frequently occurring alphabet letters.(cryptography)
Washington Irving's "The Money-Diggers" (1838) previously