Comparison of our journey with that of La Condamine & MaldonadoVisit to Paris (27 May 2007)
"Batiment Perrault" of the "Bibliothèque de l'Observatoire de Paris"
When La Condamine and Maldonado arrived in Para (Belem), the latter could go on a Portugese ship to Lisboa, where he arrived after 3 months in February 1744. Because of the political situation in Europe, La Condamine could not join him and had to find a crew of rowers that would bring him to Cayenne, where he arrived on 26 February 1744.
(From his journal one of the rare emotional remarks: “Je m’embarquai enfin la nuit du 29 au 30 Décembre 1743. Neuf ans d’absence de ma patrie, & l’espoir de trouver bien-tôt des nouvelles de ma famille & de mes amis, me donnoient la même impatience d’arriver a Cayenne, que si cette colonie eût été la France même.” )
When, via Paramaribo, he finally arrived in Amsterdam he had to wait 4 months before he obtained the necessary passport papers for travelling to Paris!
The library in the batiment Perrault; at left Mme. Simone Dumont
Copy of the front page of the book:
"Journal du Voyage fait par ordre du Roi, A l'Equateur, servant d'Introduction Historique a la Mesure des Trois Premiers Degrees du Meridien. Par M. De La Condamine.
(Oppofuit Natura Alpemque nivemque. Juven. Sat. X.)
A Paris, de l'Imprimerie Royale.
M. DCCLI."
With the help of a visiting astronomer (Madame Simone Dumont, Meudon; see photograph) I also obtained a volume of the “Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences”, Année M.DCCXLV. A Paris de l’imprimerie royale volume M.DCCXLIX (cote 2163), with on page 391 an article by La Condamine entitled “Relation abrégée d’un voyage fait dans l’interieur de l’Amérique méridionale depuis la côte de la mer du Sud jusqu'au côtes du Brésil et de la Guyane, en descendant la rivière des Amazones, lue à l'assemblée publique de l'Académie des sciences, le 28 avril 1745, par M. de La Condamine”.
At its end (page 492) the article contained a drawing (Pl.IX) of the Marañon river between Sant Iago and Borja (see copy and an image of Google Earth), entitled: “Carte du detroit appellé Pongo de Mansériché dans Le Maragnon ou la Rivière des Amazones entre Sant-Iago et Borja où le lit du Fleuve se retrécit de 250 Toises à 25 Toises” , (i.e. from about 500 to 50 m). The drawing shows how the river flows between high banks and hills.
Comparison of the drawing made by La Condamine and the satelite image of Google Earth of the same region , Pongo de Manseriche (Peru)
(distance between Sant-Iago and Borja: ~4000 Toises or 8 km)
On the title page we find
ReplyDelete"oppofuit natura Alpemque nivemque" with that old -f- without a little bar that in old prints stands for an -s-. So corrected we read: opposuit natura Alpemque nivemque, Juv. Sat. X. The quoted lines are (Juv. Sat. 10:151/3)
additur imperiis Hispania, Pyenaeum
transilit. Opposuit natura Alpemque nivemque:
diducit scopulos et montem rumpit aceto.
Which is to say:
"Spain is brought under his command, he leaps over the Pyrenees.
Nature opposes him with Alps and snow,
but he clears the rocks away and breaks the mountains with vinegar".
Juvenal wrote "satires", humourous treatises of a general character and all this stands in a philosophical context; "he" is Hannibal, when crossing the Alps seemingly on the way to hegemony of the world, yet meeting with an abominable end of his life in agony and dispair. Condamine may not have alluded to these sombre implications . . . . and simply have been proud of his measuring the circumference of the earth precisely at the equator high in the mountains near Quito, and having crossed mountains and snow on his way through the Andes to Amazonia. He had overcome, like Hannibal, "Alps and snow".
Henri Wijsman