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Jean Godin had come to a northern province of Peru (now part of Ecuador) as one of a group of French scientists.
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Meanwhile, Jean Godin, a young assistant, had married Isabel, who had long nourished dreams of the high culture of Paris.
chained_bear commented on the word Jean Godin
"In a poignant coda to the equatorial expedition, the last member arrived back in France in 1773--twenty-eight years after its departure. He was Jean Godin, cousin of the astronomer. He had joined the group as a general helper, scouting marker locations and sending signals for the principal investigators. He learned enough about natural phenomena from the expedition's experts to teach at the College of Quito at the end of the expedition. In 1741 he married the fourteen-year-old daughter of a local notable. After eight years of marriage, he learned of his father's death and decided to go to French Guiana--a trip down the Amazon like La Condamine's--to make arrangements for his family to return to France. Alas, neither the Spanish nor the Portuguese authorities would allow him to pass through their territory to retrieve his wife. Godin was in a quandary. He refused to go to France alone, and he couldn't get back to his wife. One lonely year after another passed--twenty-three in fact--while he pursued a succession of desperate schemes to reunite his family.
"La Condamine, once back in France, was able to persuade the Portuguese king to help the distraught couple. Eager to please the French, the king sent a naval unit to fetch Isabel Grameson Godin, who had not received any word from Jean in all these years. When she learned that there was a boat waiting for her on the Amazon, she decided that she would meet it halfway. Her father and brothers did everything they could to dissuade her from taking such a dangerous trip. Unsuccessful in this effort, they joined her for what became a truly horrible journey. A succession of disasters killed all of her relatives, leaving her to wander alone through the snake-infested tropics for weeks.
"People were more patient in those days. The ship captain sent to give Isabel passage to French Guiana waited for two years on the river. Two Indian couples rescued her and guided her to him. Jean described Isabel's truly remarkable survival and their joyous reunion in a lengthy letter to La Condamine, who received it as he was busy preparing a new edition of his Relation abregee. Always eager to usher a dramatic narrative into print, he added Jean Godin's letter to his text, giving the public a thrilling romance to add to their memories of these two stunning expeditions."
--Joyce Appleby, Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013), p. 169-170
December 28, 2016