The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
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CLAIRAUT, ALEXIS-CLAUDE. Mathematician in the French Academy of Sciences who was a Newtonian; member of expedition to Lapland
DESCARTES, RENÉ. Seventeenth-century French philosopher and mathematician. In Principles of Philosophy (1644), he set forth a theory that planets were held in their orbits by a swirling vortex of particles, a cosmology that came to be known as Cartesian physics.
D’HEROUVILLE. A friend of the Duc de Choiseul to whom Jean wrote for help in 1764 and who helped bring a Portuguese galliot to Cayenne
DIGUJA, JOSEPH. President of the Audiencia of Quito, 1767–1778; directed an investigation into Isabel Godin’s voyage
D’OREASAVAL, TRISTAN. Jean’s friend who went in his stead with the Portuguese galliot to pick up Isabel
D’ORVILLIERS, GILBERT GUILLOUET. Governor of French Guiana in 1750, when Jean Godin arrived in the colony
FIEDMONT, GOVERNOR. Replaced d’Orvilliers as governor of French Guiana and was in that position during Jean Godin’s last decade in the colony
LOUIS XIV. King of France, 1643–1715. The French Academy of Sciences was established during his reign.
LOUIS XV. King of France, 1715–1774
MALDONADO, PEDRO. Native of Riobamba and governor of the Esmeraldas province when the La Condamine expedition arrived in 1736; traveled down the Amazon with La Condamine in 1743
MAUPERTUIS, PIERRE-LOUIS MOREAU DE. Mathematician who led the revolt by the Newtonians against the Cartesians in the French Academy of Sciences; led the expedition to Lapland
MAUREPAS, JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC PHÉLYPEAUX DE. French minister of the marine, 1723–1749, who oversaw the La Condamine expedition for Louis XV
MENDOZA, JOSÉ DE (MARQUÉS DE VILLAGARCÍA). Viceroy of Peru, 1736–1745
NEWTON, SIR ISAAC. English mathematician who published a theory of gravity in 1682 that contradicted Cartesian physics. According to his theory, the earth would be flattened at the poles, rather than elongated, as the Cartesians believed it was.
PHILIP V. King of Spain, 1700–1746
PICARD, JEAN. French astronomer who measured a degree of arc in France in the late 1660s
REBELLO, CAPTAIN. Captain of the Portuguese galliot sent by the Portuguese king to French Guiana in 1765 with orders to help Jean Godin bring his wife from Riobamba
RICHER, JEAN. French astronomer who discovered in 1672 that a pendulum clock beat more slowly in French Guiana than in Paris, which suggested that gravitational forces were not the same at all points on the globe
ROMERO, NICOLÁS. Superior of the Maynas district who tended to Isabel in Lagunas
ROUILLÉ, ANTOINE-LOUIS (COMTE DE JOUY). France’s minister of the marine in 1750, when Jean arrived in French Guiana; minister of foreign affairs, 1754–1757
SUASTI, JUAN. Priest in Andoas
VOLTAIRE, FRANÇOIS-MARIE AROUET DE. French philosopher and writer who was ardent champion of Newtonian physics
VRILLIÈRE, LOUIS PHÉLYPEAUX (DUC DE VRILLIÈRE). 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.
67. The account of a dog biting Jussieu is from Trystram, 38.
68. “700 toises above sea level,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 9.
68. “determine their heights geometrically,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 9.
69. “ill, bled, purged, cured,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 3.
71. “youngbeard without experience,” Trystram, 43.
72-5. Descriptions of daily life in Cartagena, Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 19–87.
76. “the knowledge and the personal merit,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 5.
76. “great fatigue, time and expense,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 5.
76. “four, five, six thousand crowns,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 104.
77. “these verifications were so precise,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 275.
77. “cursed by nature,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 99.
77. “without treading on them,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 103.
78. “the most fertile imagination,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 111.
78. “When dead, [the monkeys] are scalded,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 110.
79. “of the thermometer, the barometer,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 10.
79. “I see that this trip,” LaFuente and Delgado, 43.
80. “and sometimes another in their mouth,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 129.
80. “wraps its fins around a man,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 129.
80. “Tomorrow we are to see,” LaFuente and Delgado, 41.
81. “easier to provide for the subsistence,” LaFuente and Delgado, 38.
81. “extremely mountainous and almost covered,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 143.
82. “of all this coast, the most westerly,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 11.
82. “an emerald the size of an ostrich egg,” Bouguer, 276.
83. “of labour painful to excess,” Bouguer, 276.
83. “discordant stunning noise,” Bouguer, 278.
83. “Palmar, where I carved,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 12.
84-8. The trek from Guayaquil to Quito is described by Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 150–211.
89. A number of writers have reported that Maldonado and La Condamine traveled together from Esmeraldas to Quito. This mistaken version of events appears to have originated with Von Hagen’s South America Called Them. Historians at a 1985 colloquium in Paris pointed out the error.
89-91. La Condamine describes his trip from Esmeraldas to Quito in Journal du voyage, 13–15.
Chapter Six: Measuring the Baseline
93. “tropical paradise,” Bouguer, 285.
95. “transcendental matters of science,” Vera, 10.
96. “seemed to vie with each other,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 208.
96. “breathing an air more rarified,” Bouguer, 286.
96. “Nature has here scattered,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 276.
96. “vast quantities of wrought plate,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 255.
96. “white and fibrous, but infinitely delicate,” Bouguer, 299.
97. “affected great magnificence in their dress,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 264.
97. “Every part of their dress is,” Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 265.
98. “Seventy mules used to carry cargo,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 16.
99. “watch that the said astronomers,” Colloque International. Article by Jorge Salvador Lara, “La Biblioteca Americana de Don Antonio de Alcedo y Bejarano y la expedición de los académicos franceses,” 81.
100. “within the boundaries,” Zúñiga, 26.
100. “I will always be suspicious,” Colloque International, 82.
100. “would be found near or next to the equator,” Zúñiga, 27.
100. “the first time that I had emerged,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 17.
101. “I completely satisfied the President,” La Condamine, Journal du voyage, 17.
101. Zúñiga details how many of the elite in Quito bought goods from La Condamine.