The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon by Robert Whitaker

Author:Robert Whitaker [Whitaker, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, World, Non-Fiction, 18th Century, South America
ISBN: 9780385337205
Google: AcMuBgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B001F517PG
Barnesnoble: B001F517PG
Goodreads: 378760
Publisher: Delta
Published: 2004-04-12T23:00:00+00:00

Samuel Fritz’s Map of the Amazon, 1707.

By permission of the British Library.

FROM THE BEGINNING of the French expedition, there had been some talk that the group, as a whole, would return via the Amazon. But as the mission went on and on and the group came to be rent by dissension, that idea faded away. However, La Condamine never lost interest in the route, and as early as 1738, he had initiated the process of obtaining a passport from the Portuguese. “As for the discomforts,” he wrote in his journal in 1741, “I knew these would be great, and everything which I had heard only served to increase the wish I had to experience it for myself.”

At the last minute, La Condamine also coaxed Pedro Maldonado to join him. Maldonado, who had finished his Esmeraldas road by 1742, had initially begged off, his family urging him not to go on such a dangerous venture. By the time Maldonado made up his mind to ignore his family’s advice, it was too late for him to leave with La Condamine, so they decided to take different routes to the river and meet up in Lagunas. Maldonado, leaving from the Riobamba area, would skirt around the base of Mount Tungurahua and head east on foot down a steep gorge that spilled out of the Andes; then he would follow the Bobonaza and Pastaza Rivers to the Amazon. La Condamine, who would be departing from Tarqui after finishing his celestial observations, decided to head south to Jaen, where, after a short journey overland, he could pick up the Marañón. This would allow him to draw a map of the entire navigable part of the Amazon and would also enable him to see whether “the famous strait known under the name of Pongo de Manseriche was as terrible up close at it had been described to me from afar.” In Quito, he noted, they spoke of this passage “only in hushed tones of admiration and fear.”

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