Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/444

388 philosophical patience and generosity of the supposed debtor, became the admiration of all.

At length he drew up a memorial, addressed to the viceroy, in which, styling himself the Hercules of geography, and the prodigy of the mathematics, he beseeched him, as an ardent lover of the sciences, and of their progress, to transmit his discovery to Paris, and to demand for him the reward, to which he thought himself justly entitled. When in the act of presenting it, he was suddenly snatched off by death, towards the close of the month of December 1790; and this toil of fifty years, contained in a prodigious heap of papers, was what he left as an inheritance to a natural daughter. Thus perished miserably this laborious investigator of the quadrature of the circle.

His case brings to our recollection another of a similar nature, but having a different object. Don Manuel de Torquemada, formerly principal equerry to the viceroy, the Marquis of Casteldosrius, augmented the number of maniacs. This man, polished, discreet, and highly agreeable in conversation, finally concentrated the whole of his ideas in the construction of a machine, simply consisting of a slab and muller, similar to those employed by the apothecaries in levigating their powders; with which he asserted that he could refine all the ores in Peru, and pave the streets of the capital with bars of silver. This persuasion took so strong a hold of him, that his society at length became tiresome and painful, as he could speak of nothing but his incomprehensible discovery.