The Mapmaker's Wife (44 page)

S
UASTI
, J
UAN
. Priest in Andoas

V
OLTAIRE
, F
RANÇOIS
-M
ARIE
A
ROUET DE
. French philosopher and writer who was ardent champion of Newtonian physics

V
RILLIÈRE
, L
OUIS
P
HÉLYPEAUX
(D
UC DE
V
RILLIÈRE
). French minister who in 1773 approved a pension for Jean Godin

Notes

See the bibliography for the sources referred to in these notes. For additional information on the Bobonaza River, go to
www.themapmakerswife.com
.

Chapter One: A Sunday in 1769

La Condamine wrote in his journal of Maldonado’s family and friends advising him not to go into the Amazon. Jean Godin described Isabel’s departure from Riobamba in a sedan chair in his 1773 letter to La Condamine. The
Archivo Nacional de Historia (Arnahis)
documents also provide information about Isabel’s departure from Riobamba.

Chapter Two: Not Quite Round

Berthon and Robinson’s
Shape of the World
and Brown’s
Story of Maps
were particularly useful regarding historical efforts to determine the size and shape of the world prior to the La Condamine expedition. Greenberg’s
Problem of the Earth’s Shape from Newton to Clairaut
and LaFuente and Delgado’s
La geometrizacion de la tierra
provide accounts of the debate within the French Academy of Sciences over the earth’s shape.

8.
“an unclouded and attentive mind,”
A. Wolf, 644.

8.
“Science was the true passion,”
Hahn, 57.

14.
“Plato, Aristotle, and the old philosophers,”
Berthon and Robinson, 102.

19.
“has cost me a major portion of my realm,”
Berthon and Robinson, 109.

20.
“the success of this work,”
Cassini, 245–257.

21.
“Nothing in our research,”
Cassini, 245–257.

21.
“emits from itself,”
Hall, 262.

24.
“to entertain a notion,”
Westfall, 51.

24.
“How these Attractions,”
Westfall, 258.

25.
“the axes of the planets,”
Jones, 45.

25.
“spheroid prolonged toward the poles,”
Jones, 57.

26.
“It is suspected that this resulted,”
Berthon and Robinson, 108.

26.
Huygens’s “absurd”
letter to Newton, Westfall, 193. Also see Boss, 59.

26.
“It is obvious that the current measurements,”
LaFuente and Delgado, 21.

26.
“gibberish … I tried to understand it,”
Greenberg, 12.

27.
“badgered, intimidated, cajoled,”
Greenberg, 87.

27.
“justify the English at the expense,”
Greenberg, 87.

28.
“Who would have ever thought it necessary,”
Paul, 30.

28.
“being scandalous, and offensive to religion,”
Brandes, 266.

28.
“Apparently a poor Frenchman,”
Brandes, 365.

29.
“this senseless and ridiculous phantom,”
Brandes, 389.

29.
“most eminent geniuses of Europe,”
Juan and Ulloa,
A Voyage to South America
, 5.

29.
“cannot have any determinate shape,”
Greenberg, 12.

29.
“inconceivably exact,”
LaFuente and Delgado, 26.

29.
“sectarian”
and “indiscreet,” Harcourt Brown, 174.

29.
“facts of the matter,”
Greenberg, 80.

Chapter Three: A Daughter of Peru

The best biographical information about Isabel Gramesón can be found in a book published by the municipality of Riobamba in 2000,
Una historia de amor
. The author, Carlos Ortiz Arellano, is a local historian who relied on archival documents in Ecuador. Similarly, Marc Lemaire in France, who is a distant relative of Isabel’s, unearthed helpful
information through his research into the genealogy of the Godin family.

31.
“equipped with a considerable fortune,”
Le Magasin Pittoresque
, 371.

33.
“the most splendid appearance,”
Juan and Ulloa,
A Voyage to South America
, 156.

33.
“everywhere so level,”
Juan and Ulloa,
A Voyage to South America
, 154.

33.
“300 loads of wheat,”
Arellano, 32.

33.
“didn’t let pass by any business,”
Arellano, 32.

34.
“she was quite precocious,”
Lemaire, “Mais … qui etait Dona Isabelle Godin des Odonais?”

35.
“kept their women sequestered,”
Rowdon, 36.

36.
“most distinguished and blessed day,”
Kamen,
Spain: 1469–1714
, 35.

37.
“mirrored with sufficient fidelity,”
O’Connor, 8.

37.
“for our rulers would not commit so great a crime,”
Leonard,
Books of the Brave
, 30.

38.
“We went along the coast,”
Leonard,
Books of the Brave
, 46.

38.
“because it is said that there are people,”
Leonard,
Books of the Brave
, 46.

39.
“If there be any so craven,”
Prescott, 183.

39.
“We were amazed,”
Leonard,
Books of the Brave
, 43.

40.
“at given times men from the mainland,”
Leonard,
Books of the Brave
, 48.

40.
“eat and drink out of gold vessels,”
Prescott, 309.

42.
“We protest that the deaths,”
Burkholder and Johnson, 37.

44.
“These women are very white and tall,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 52. The text in
Colonial Travelers
is an excerpt from
The Discovery of the Amazon according to the Account of Friar Gáspar de Carvajal
, as translated into English by Bertram Lee in 1934.

45.
“it is considered a shame,”
Martín, 154. This quote is from Amedée Frezier, a Frenchman who traveled to South America in 1712.

45.
“spend almost whole days in this manner,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 167. The text is an excerpt from Frezier’s
Voyage to the South Sea and along the Coasts of Chili and Peru in the Years 1712, 1713, and 1714;
an English translation of his work first appeared in 1717.

45.
“If sometimes I had put my hands on her,”
Martín, 148.

Chapter Four: The Mapmakers

The eulogies in
Histoire et memoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences
provide excellent biographical information on La Condamine, Bouguer, Louis Godin, and Joseph de Jussieu. I also relied on information from Gillispie’s
Dictionary of Scientific Biography
. See Pierre Godin’s “Génealogie de la famille Godin” and Boyer’s
Nouvelle biographie generale
for biographical information about Jean Godin. Jacques Charcellet, a local historian in the Berry region of France, also provides some biographical information about Jean Godin’s family in his “Histoire fantastique de Jean et Isabelle Godin des Odonais,” as does Felix Grandmaison in “Un drame inconnu: Voyage de Madame Godin des Odonnais,” his 1830 account of Isabel’s adventure. Felix was the son of Isabel’s nephew.

48.
“He knew how to intersperse humor,”
eulogy for Louis Godin, which was composed by Jean-Paul Grandjean de Fouchy.

49.
“dislike for sea voyages,”
Bouguer, 271.

50.
“extensive scarification of his face,”
eulogy for La Condamine, which was composed by Jacques Delille and included remarks by Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon.

51.
“an apostle of Newton and Locke,”
LaFuente and Delgado, 25.

52.
“sensed that his zeal,”
eulogy for La Condamine.

52
. Several who have written about the La Condamine expedition claim that there was an eleventh member, Mabillon, and a few even report that he went crazy on the expedition. But La Condamine does not list Mabillon as a member of the expedition, he does not write about him in his journal of the voyage, and there is no Mabillon listed on the expedition’s passport. The confusion seems to have arisen because La Condamine, when he provided an update on the expedition members in 1773, stated that Jussieu had lost his memory, much like the “famous Mabillon.” But in that passage, La Condamine was not stating that Mabillon was on the expedition. Instead, he was simply comparing Jussieu to a person who would be known to eighteenth-century French readers (perhaps Jean Mabillon, a seventeenth-century French scholar
and Benedictine monk). Victor Von Hagen, in his 1945 book
South America Called Them
, wrote that Mabillon went “mad” on the voyage, an invention subsequently repeated by others.

52.
“vivid imagination,”
eulogy for Jussieu, which was composed by Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet.

53.
“born a traveler,”
Grandmaison.

53.
“study at their source,”
Boyer.

54.
“By the abundant treasure of that country,”
Means, 230.

54.
“ravening wolves among gentle lambs,”
Las Casas, xl.

54.
“a moral pestilence which daily consumes,”
Las Casas, xx.

55.
“I testify that I saw,”
Las Casas, 113.

56.
“they rain[ed] down from the sky,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 73. This is an excerpt from Carletti’s
My Voyage around the World
, translated by Herbert Weinstock and reprinted in 1964.

56.
“themselves together by their tails,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 75.

57.
“eyes in their shoulders,”
Alexander, 172.

57.
“far exceeds any of the world,”
Gheerbrant, 42.

58.
“three and four hundred bars and ingots of silver,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 83.

59.
“They always go dressed very fine,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 130. The text in
Colonial Travelers
is an excerpt from Biscay’s
Voyage à Buenos Aires et delá au Perou
, which was published in Paris in 1672 and translated into English in 1698.

59.
“that should oppose their pleasures,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 161.

59.
“wear three or four buff-waistcoats,”
Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 134.

59.
“display themselves strolling about,”
“the part which men do in France,” and “proposals which a lover would not dare to make,” Leonard,
Colonial Travelers in Latin America
, 160–174.

59.
“where the rivers ran inland,”
Las Casas, xl.

60.
“persons who have never been induced,”
Bouguer, 272.

61.
“while abroad there is progress in physics,”
Kamen,
The Spanish Inquisition
, 250.

61.
“sharp voice,”
LaFuente and Delgado, 37.

61.
“to study the country and bring back a detailed description,”
Trystram, 35.

61
.
“which would be advantageous not only for,”
La Condamine,
Journal du voyage
, 272.

62.
“be made at the equator itself,”
and “useful for navigation in general,” La Condamine,
Journal du voyage
, 273.

62.
“give them all assistance, favors and protection,”
and “above suspicion of any illegal commerce,” La Condamine,
Journal du voyage
, 274–276.

Chapter Five: Voyage to Quito

La Condamine wrote about the voyage to Quito and their scientific work in the Andes in
Journal du voyage fait par ordre du roi à l’équateur
. Juan and Ulloa described the journey in
Relación histórica del viage a la América Meridional;
the page numbers cited here are from the Adams’s 1806 translation,
A Voyage to South America
. Ulloa was the principal author, and in passages where it is apparent that it is Ulloa writing, I have at times attributed the quote only to him.

65.
“large and long waves,”
Juan and Ulloa,
A Voyage to South America
, 13.

66.
“Mr. Amonton’s sea barometer,”
La Condamine,
Journal du voyage
, 9.

66.
“be of Use, where the Motion of the Objects,”
Lloyd Brown, 194–196.

67.
“far beyond the usual limits,”
La Condamine,
Journal du voyage
, 9.