Shape of the Earth - Full Meridian of Glory - page 71

the director's authority and by threatening the man with a beating. The director
declared that the festival was canceled: “There was nothing,” wrote La Condamine,
“that could infuriate the common man more.” With cries of, “death to the govern-
ment and death to the French,” an armed mob surged forward towards the doctor.
Bouguer, La Condamine and the others tried to defend the doctor but were outnum-
bered and intimidated. They withdrew under a shower of stones with minor injuries
(Bouguer was wounded in the back). Stabbed with a dagger by the festival's direc-
tor, Senièrgues died of his wounds four days later. Two years after the incident, La
Condamine succeeded in having the perpetrators tried and convicted and then was
outraged when they were let off with a light punishment.
If the expedition had run into difficulties in Quito and Cuenca, the astronomical
observations at the southern station of Tarqui were not free of difficulties either. To
observe the elevations of the stars in their motions and thus the latitude of the south-
ern station, a 12 foot zenith sector had been brought from France, but the instru-
ment lacked rigidity. It had been separated into two pieces for ease of transportation,
but the screws had been lost and it was fastened with strengthening bars and wires.
The performance of its telescope also left much to be desired; its lens suffered from
severe chromatic aberration, and it showed stars as colored halos without a distinct
focus. Godin and Juan therefore made their own instrument with which to observe
at Cuenca- in fact they made two, abandoning the first as unsatisfactory.
Given the bickering between those in the expedition, the difficulties of the
mountainous terrain and in communicating with France (which was half a year's
voyage across the Atlantic Ocean), the meager finances, and diplomatic difficulties
it is perhaps not surprising that the expedition took ten years and stretched the
patience of the French government's support. It must have been disheartening to
be told in a letter from Maurepas (received in 1738) that Maupertuis had solved the
problem of the shape of the Earth with the Lapland expedition. What now was the
point of the expedition to Peru? The letter containing the news hinted that the expe-
dition should return without giving explicit orders.
The letter was uncertain in its intent because no one in the Academy could bear
the loss of face if the expedition was abandoned and after all the effort returned
empty-handed. The members of the expedition were very disheartened by a phrase
in another letter from Clairaut. It was meant to be encouraging. It said that the
measurements in Peru were “vital to confirm Maupertuis' measurements.” What
had started as an expedition to solve a problem had been downgraded to an expedi-
tion to confirm someone else's solution. The expedition stayed to complete the
survey, but La Condamine broadened the scope of the exploration to give more
emphasis to natural history and other natural phenomena.
TEN YEARS AFTER they had left Paris, the principal French members of the
expedition returned, with Jorge Juan. La Condamine arrived eight months after, via
a dangerous trip through the Amazon basin, of which he published an account in
1745 entitled Relation abrégée d'un voyage fait dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique
Méridionale ( Brief account of a voyage made in the interior of South America ). He
collected natural history specimens that he gave to the naturalist Georges Buffon
(1707-1788) for his works on natural history entitled Discours sur la manière