Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
two axes to see over the trees lining the river. From these scaffolds, a surveyor could
sight on prominent landmarks in the towns of France like the spires of churches.
The peasants became suspicious, this sentiment arising from fear and superstition;
the surveyors used cabalistic instruments, stared at the stars, and wrote hieroglyphics
on papers. Was this witchcraft, they wondered? This was justified concern that the
investigations of these agents of the state would result in an extension of control
and taxes. In further cases, even educated local officials were suspicious of these
strangers. Were they spies, making signals and plotting revolt? During 1743 the
teams were working in the Vosges, in an area known to be populated by Anabaptists,
as noted darkly by a local official, M. de Blinglin. These people worked on Sundays
and left people behind or paid peasants to light signal fires at specific times; one
had left a stone marked J.G; another made copious notes. De Blinglin reported all
this to his superiors, but their reply of reassurance did not completely satisfy him.
Even if their mission was for some “official” purpose, perhaps they were also carrying
out activities as part of a treasonable plot?
Some of the suspicions about the surveyors had not even this amount of rationality
as their basis. In southern France near the village of Les Estables (Haute-Loire) in
a remote region at the foot of the Mézenc mountain range, the arrival of a surveyor
coincided with several items of bad luck. It had happened before when similar
people had come from the capital - cows had become lame, sheep were found dead,
crops withered. The man was attacked, bludgeoned and hacked to death by the
villagers before he could work his malevolent sorcery. Attacked in the same way
for similar reasons, another surveyor working near the village of Cuq in the Tarn
was lucky to escape with his life. He recovered consciousness and staggered, bleeding
and nursing a broken skull, to an inn run by the “Widow Julia”, who called for help
and a doctor. The surveyor recovered but had to retire from active work.
We do not know which particular one of the ninety five surveyors who worked on
the project lost his life, a martyr to geodesy. Of most we know only their last names,
enscribed on the charts into which their work was compiled. There are fragmentary
details of a dozen. One had left the church and later died of a disease that he con-
tracted in southern California where he went to observe the transit of Venus in 1769.
One had been a playwright. One became a teacher, another became a general. The
work that they created was a series of more than 800 accurately-surveyed triangles
relating the principal cities and towns on the map of France. Under Cassini III, the
surveyors and cartographers completed the most comprehensive map of France in
182 pages, even though the government withdrew financial support. With only two
leaves of the map left to be printed, Cassini III died of smallpox, and the
Carte de
France de Cassini
was published by his son, Cassini IV, in 1790.
