SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION. 15 



overgrown with tall herbage and trees. The work of discovery instead of pro- 

 gressing continued for a long time to recede, so that the children began to doubt 

 or to forget what their fathers had done ; certain formerly well-known districts 

 fell into complete oblivion. 



During the long colonial period, journeys deviating from the frequented high- 

 ways occurred only at long intervals. On the other hand, even the most success- 

 ful expeditions served but little to increase the general knowledge of the land, for 

 the jealous Spanish and Portuguese Governments sought to reserve for their own 

 use the acquired results, keeping many precious documents in their secret archives, 

 where they became worm-eaten past recovery. 



The navigators of all nations continued the systematic survey of the coastlands, 

 while the interior of the continent still remained wrapped in a dense cloud of 

 ignorance. The detailed reports, accompanied by maps, which the officials were 

 required to forward to the Council of the Indies on every province of the vast 

 colonial domain, reports which are now of such value to students, were never 

 published, and remained neglected by their custodians. Thus, at the time of the 

 union of the two kingdoms, a joint Hispano-Portuguese expedition was made in 

 1638 up the Amazons between Para and Quito. But the Spanish Govei-nment, 

 which had allowed the monk Acuna to write an account of the voyage, hastened 

 to confiscate the book as soon as the Portuguese had recovered their independence. 

 It feared that this work, the first that gave a detailed description of the great 

 river, might be of service to some enemy.* 



The epoch of scientific exploration began with the researches of Feuillee, a 

 priest and astronomer, who, in 1707-12, made the circumnavigation of the southern 

 shores of America in order to determine the exact position of a few points on the 

 seaboard. But the modern geographical history of the continent may be said to 

 date from the time when Bouguer, Godin, La Condamine, and Ulloa undertook the 

 measurement of an arc of the meridian of about three degrees between the two 

 parallel chains of Ecuador. 



Over a century and a half has passed since the memorable year 1736, when 

 the learned geometricians landed at Guayaquil, and made their waj'- to the group 

 of mountains which they had to measure, and which was at that time regarded as 

 the culminating point of the globe. Many were the difficulties which they had to 

 overcome, in an almost desert region, destitute of communications, furrowed by 

 tremendous ravines, exposed to frequent earthquakes, covered lower down by 

 almost impenetrable forests, higher up by rocks and snows. Hence the work, 

 although steadily prosecuted, lasted six years ; but it was of supreme importance, 

 not only for the study of South America, but also for that of the whole world, and 

 for determining the exact shape of the planet. 



It is a remarkable fact, attesting the extreme care with which the scientific 

 commission carried out its labours, that the positions assigned by it to the cities of 

 the plateau and to the surrounding mountains were far more correct than those 



* Acuna, Nuevo Bescahnmiento dd gran Rio de las Amazonas ; C. R. Markham, Expeditions into the 

 Valley of the Amazons, Uakluyt Society. 



