1735 French Expedition to Measure Earth - Part III

…Dessert at Christophe's was pineapple, carmelized with cinnamon – deee-licious! – topped off with a finger of Armagnac. Between sips, I told the Uber-Mensch everything he wanted to know about what happened to the ten members of the greatest scientic expedition the world has ever known.

Charles-Marie de La Condamine, adventurer, geographer, and mathematician, made it back to France in 1745 a hero. After ten years spent proving the earth's shape, he then set off to chart the 3000-mile course of the Amazon River from the Andes to the Atlantic, something no European had ever done before.

Pierre Bouguer, who signed on as the mission’s astronomer (he had been a child prodigy in math, famous for making celestial observations at sea) returned to France at the expedition’s end. He remained a productive scientist until his death at the age of 60, in 1758. Among his achievements were the invention of the heliometer, used for measuring the diameters of planets, as well as his studies of the properties of light, which earned him posthumous recognition as “the father of photometry”.

Jean Verguin, a naval engineer and draftsman whose job was to draw the expedition’s maps, enjoyed a prosperous career upon his return to France and lived a long, healthy life.

But not all their stories had happy endings.

Three of the expedition's members died in South America: Couplet, one of two assistants charged with advanced mapping and identification of the best geographical locations for each new research point, died from fever. Surprisingly, he was the only one to succumb as fever constantly preyed on the French scientists. Morainville, an engineer who built the observatories needed for the team’s celestial measurements, suffered a fatal injury after falling from a scaffold. The expedition surgeon, Senièrgues, whose job was to tend to the medical needs of the expedition members, was attacked and killed by a mob, angry at the way the Frenchman openly flirted with their women.

Hugo, the watchmaker responsible for the care and maintenance of the scientific instruments, simply disappeared.

Joseph de Jussieu, the expedition’s botanist whose story is recounted here, would take 36 years to return to France, and not by choice. At times his skills were considered so valuable that he was forbidden to depart by the local authorities, such as when he was made to care for the sick during a 1745 outbreak of smallpox. At other times he was ready to leave, but prevented in other ways, like when a 1746 tidal wave destroyed the port from which he was set to sail. Eventually, in 1771, he returned to Paris, a frail and broken man. His mind was shattered, his body would soon follow. Eight years later, he died, at the age of 74, eulogized as a “martyr to science”.

Louis Godin, mathematician, astronomer, and nominal leader of the expedition, was forced, like de Jussieu, to stay in Peru. He remained for 16 years under orders of the government, returning to his wife and two children only in 1751. He was never the same. In 1760, at the age of 56, he died from an attack of apoplexy.

And then there is the story of Louis' nephew, Jean Godin, who joined the expedition as an ambitious youth with a desire for adventure. His twenty-year separation from his Peruvian wife is one of the most tragic and romantic tales the world has ever known.

You can read about the story of the assistant mapmaker and his devoted bride in The Mapmaker's Wife, by Robert Whitaker.

Images:

Map of La Condamine's travels found at www.enchantedlearning.com.

Portraits of Pierre Bouguer and Louis Godin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1735 French Expedition to Measure Earth - Part II

...No sooner had I swilled my last sip of white Burgundy when it was replaced by a glass of red Saumur. Another Chef’s selection, meant to accompany my plat (main dish) of duck breast from Challans, a town in the Vendée region of France famous for its poultry. The Uber-Mensch ordered the shoulder of lamb, and both dishes were brought to the table by the Chef Christophe himself. After we ooohed and ahhhed for half-a-dozen sumptuous bites, offering each other a sample portion and then reneging again, it was time to resume the story of the greatest scientific expedition the world had ever known (see Part I here)…

On May 16, 1735, Charles-Marie de La Condamine and a team of eight scientists, a doctor sent to care for the group, and a botanist, Joseph de Jussieu, set sail for Peru from La Rochelle, France. Their overt mission was to measure one degree of the arc of the earth's meridian at the equator...

...Their covert mission was to penetrate the area of the world that had been controlled by Spain for more than two centuries. Click on the map, left, to view how the map of South America changed from the 1700's, after the French expedition.

The easiest part of the journey was the ocean passage from France to the Americas. The seas were calm, the weather cooperative, and the boat equipped with fine brandy. The French team crossed the Atlantic in less than one month. From that point on, however, hardship reigned.

They put in at Cartagena, a swampy and windless port so rife with mosquitoes that some of the team arrived in the New World already sick with fever. They were stricken by the “illness of Siam” -- later known as malaria -- a disease considered dangerous even for the American natives. The victims' strength would ever after be compromised; they would be plagued by fevers for the rest of their lives.

Once in Cartagena, the team needed to reach their starting point in Quito. To do this they had first to cross the Panamanian isthmus, continue south along the continent’s western coast, and travel inland, up and over the western ridge of the Andes Mountains, dragging their telescopes and other heavy, delicate instruments with them all the way. On this leg of the journey they encountered widely varied terrain...

They coursed swift-moving rivers lined with man-eating alligators in flat-bottomed rafts held together with nothing more than the rope-like branches of the liana tree. They traversed land on mules, hacking their way through dense, dark forest with axes and machetes. They scaled mountains higher and more treacherous than expected or imagined, at times inching along narrow ledges that gave way on one side to deep abyss, at other times crossing over profound crevasses on woven bridges that swayed with each tentative step.

They slept in huts on stilts when torrential rains stopped their progress, or in mountain caves the mouths of which iced over at night and had to be broken through in the morning with frozen and bleeding hands.

More than once, when the route became too rough, they were abandoned by their guides. More than once, when the route became too narrow, they had to abandon their mules and pack their instruments and belongings themselves. But the worst menace they faced were the insects, whose stings caused painful and fiery itching to exposed hands and faces which swelled and became covered with painful blisters. One by one, the voyagers were brought down by illness and fever. Joseph and the doctor brought them back to life with cures from native plants that their Indians guides taught him along the way. The bark of the cinchona tree they used to create quinine, a tonic capable of reducing high fever. With the leaves of the coca shrub they created a strong analgesic, called cocaine, able to treat pain.

One year after their departure from France, the team finally made it to Quito. It had taken 11 months to reach the starting point of their expedition. Already bruised and broken, their real work had yet to begin. And what they thought would take two years to accomplish would now drag on for another ten. But when the French scientists finally concluded their measurements and arrived back in France in 1745, they had proven Isaac Newton’s theory the right one.

***

The story, however, does not end there. They didn't all make it back to France. Stay tuned for the rest.

But first, we must ponder dessert…

Sources:
The Great Expeditions. National Geographic, London, 2007.

Whitaker, Robert. The Mapmaker's Wife. Bantam Books, London, 2005.

Images:

Lithograph of Charles Marie de la Condamine, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Map showing changing borders of South American continent from 1700s and onward by Esemono, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of the Andes Mountains by Roman Bonnefoy, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of virgin forest in the South American jungle by Jean-Baptiste Debret, 1834-1839, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Drawings of the coca plant, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Satellite photo of the "blue marble" by NASA, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1735 French Expedition to Measure Earth - Part I

Last Saturday night, the Uber-Mensch and I found ourselves wandering the streets of oldest Paris. We passed a remnant of the 12th century Philippe-Auguste wall, scooted behind the Pantheon where such famous French souls as Marie and Pierre Curie are laid to rest, and shot in front of the 200-year-old school of science, the Ecole Polytechnique. We searched for a hip Latin Quarter restaurant with an up-and-coming chef, both named Christophe, that we'd read about in our favorite restaurant guide, Hungry for Paris. At last we located our destination, nestled between two busy student bars on the rue Descartes. The name of the street brought to mind France’s great 18th century scientific expedition, the one that included Joseph de Jussieu. So, while sipping a coupe of Champagne and awaiting our entrées (first course), I shared the story with the U-M.

It was the age of Enlightenment. Knowledge was the new power. And the race was on to ascertain the true size and shape of the earth. French scientists held to the established theory of French philosopher, Rene Descartes (1596–1650), who claimed that the earth was prolate: longer in diameter from pole to pole and squished or pinched at the equator rather like a pot-bellied man wearing a tight belt. But across the channel in England, a young up-start named Isaac Newton had another notion. Studying Jupiter each night, as Galileo Galelei had done a century before him, Newton believed that the earth bulged at the equator and shortened slightly from pole to pole, making it oblate in shape. He theorized that the length of the earth’s arc would therefore be longer at the equator than at its northern and southern extremes.

A decisive experiment was needed. In 1733, King Louis XV – the same king who would later lay the foundation for the Pantheon – resolved that France would be first to unlock this mysterious puzzle, even if it proved Descartes wrong. It took two years to assemble and equip a team of French mathematicians, astrologers, map-makers, and engineers with the most highly technical scientific instruments and gadgets of their day. It would be "the greatest scientific expedition the world have ever known".

Their mission: to measure the length (or degree) of the earth’s meridian (its north-south axis) at the equator in Peru. The measurement obtained there, when compared to the same measurements from Paris and Swedish Lapland, where a similar expedition was also heading, would prove who was right: the Cartesians or the Newtonians.

“Why Peru?” the U-M wanted to know. “Wouldn’t Africa have been easier?”

But just as I was about to answer, out came my trio of Dublin Bay prawns wrapped with basil in a light pastry blanket and served on a bed of fresh greens.

The taste? Bref: Exquisite.

The rest of the story would have to wait until I’d savored the medley of flavors in this delectable dish brought to life with a white burgundy specially selected by the chef…

**
When next in Paris, try this bonne addresse: Christophe, 8 rue Descartes, 5th arrondissement.

But wait, stayed tuned, there’s more of both meal and story…

Sources:
Lobrano, Alexander. Hungry for Paris. Random House, New York, 2008.
The Great Expeditions. National Geographic, London, 2007.
Whitaker, Robert. The Mapmaker's Wife. Bantam Books, London, 2005.

Images:
Photo of the Paris Pantheon at night, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Copyright © 2004 David Monniaux.
1730 painting of King Louis XV by Hyacinth Rigaud, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.