Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/135

Rh and to make obedient his native auxiliaries. These are military qualities. Besides, one knows that, in our army, science has always marched shoulder to shoulder with courage.

I add that a military organization assures the indispensable unity of action. It would be more difficult to reconcile the rival pretensions of scientists jealous of their independence, solicitous of what they call their fame, and who yet must work in concert, though separated by great distances. Among the geodesists of former times there were often discussions, of which some aroused long echoes. The Academy long resounded with the quarrel of Bouguer and La Condamine. I do not mean to say that soldiers are exempt from passion, but discipline imposes silence upon a too sensitive self-esteem.

Several foreign governments have called upon our officers to organize their geodesic service: this is proof that the scientific influence of France abroad has not declined.

Our hydrographic engineers contribute also to the common achievement a glorious contingent. The survey of our coasts, of our colonies, the study of the tides offer them a vast domain of research. Finally I may mention the general leveling of France which is carried out by the ingenious and precise methods of M. Lallemand.

With such men we are sure of the future. Moreover, work for them will not be lacking; our colonial empire opens for them immense expanses illy explored. That is not all: the International Geodetic Association has recognized the necessity of a new measurement of the arc of Quito, determined in days of yore by La Condamine. It is France that has been charged with this operation; she had every right to it, since our ancestors had made, so to speak, the scientific conquest of the Cordilleras. Besides, these rights have not been contested and our government has undertaken to exercise them.

Captains Maurain and Lacombe completed a first reconnaissance, and the rapidity with which they accomplished their mission, crossing the roughest regions and climbing the most precipitous summits, is worthy of all praise. It won the admiration of General Alfaro, President of the Eepublic of Ecuador, who called them "los hombres de hierro," the men of iron.

The final commission then set out under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel (then Major) Bourgeois. The results obtained have justified the hopes entertained. But our officers have encountered unforeseen difficulties due to the climate. More than once, one of them has been forced to remain several months at an altitude of 4,000 meters, in the clouds and the snow, without seeing anything of the signals he had to aim at and which refused to unmask themselves. But thanks to their perseverance and courage, there resulted from this only a delay and an increase of expense, without the exactitude of the measurements suffering therefrom.