NEW LIGHT ON THE ROLE OF INSTRUMENTS IN EXPLORATION DURING THE 1830S
by JANEWESS*
38 Agate Rd, London W6 0AH, UK
This paper sets out a new interpretation of the agency of scientific instruments in the field. It uses Actor Network Theory as a conceptual framework, which invokes the concept of non- human agency, meaning that scientific instruments can affect outcomes and processes. It argues that the instruments taken on expeditions by travellers on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) had agency in knowledge creation simply by being present.
Having bequeathed the instruments, the RGS had sanctioned the expedition, and knowledge had to result regardless of whether the instruments had been utilized as intended. The paper builds on the work of historians on the morality of precision, but, by engaging in a detailed comparison of rhetoric and action in two case studies, it suggests a different approach. Observing the strategies of the RGS for knowledge creation in varying circumstances, it argues that the instruments had agency owing to their embedded resource rather than their tangible numerical outputs. The instruments did not always work as mediators between humans and natural phenomena, as the human actants were not able to exploit them as such. Nevertheless, they had agency in knowledge creation as their presence ensured success. The paper is based on published and unpublished material, the latter in the RGS–Institute of British Geographers archives.
Keywords: scientific instruments, exploration, Royal Geographical Society, nineteenth century, Robert Schomburgk, James Alexander
INTRODUCTION
This paper follows a general survey of instrument use at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).1 It relates to the investigations of the morality of measurement and precision discussed by Graham Burnett, Simon Schaffer and Graham Gooday, and to the role of instruments as described by N. J. Thrift and N. Bingham.2 Actor Network Theory is
*e-mail: [email protected]
1 J. Wess and C. Withers,‘Instrument provision and geographical science: the work of the Royal Geographical Society, 1830–ca 1930’, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 73, 223–241 (2019).
2 G. D. Burnett, Masters of all they surveyed: exploration, geography, and a British El Dorado (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000); S. Schaffer,‘Accurate measurement is an English science’, in Values of precision (ed. M. Norton Wise), pp. 135–173
Published online
1 © 2021 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society.
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particularly pertinent. Actors, or‘actants’, leave inscriptions or traces. They perform and have agencies, which are not necessarily intentional.3The removal of intention introduces non- human actants, a controversial but crucial part of the model.4 Scientific knowledge is built up through cycles of accumulation of inscriptions, matching the physical cycles of the RGS instruments.
The paper argues that the instruments taken on expeditions by travellers on behalf of the RGS had agency in knowledge creation simply by being present. Having bequeathed the instruments, the RGS had sanctioned the expedition, and knowledge had to result from this resource. The paper builds on the work of historians on the morality of precision, but, by engaging in a detailed comparison of rhetoric and action in two case studies, it suggests a different approach. Observing the strategies of the RGS for knowledge creation in varying circumstances, it argues that the instruments had agency owing to their embedded resource rather than their tangible numerical outputs. The paper is based on published and unpublished material, the latter in the RGS–Institute of British Geographers (IBG) archives.
An instrumental culture, if it is to work as the rhetoric suggests, entails acquiring instruments, which already have a hinterland of knowledge embedded within them, training their users, managing their effective use in the field, and the incorporation of numerical results derived from the instruments into the outputs where they contribute to knowledge creation. There is evidence that during the whole of nineteenth century, but less so in the following decades, instrumental results were viewed as synonymous with scientific credentials by the RGS.5 Several authors have remarked on the significance of numerical information during this period. Patricia Cline Cohen related the prestige of quantification ascendant in the mid nineteenth century.6 Ian Hacking described the early nineteenth century as ‘generating a world becoming numerical and measured in every corner of its being’.7 As Theodore Porter has remarked, ‘Quantification is well-suited for communication that goes beyond the boundaries of locality and community’;8and as Mary Poovey wrote: ‘there is a supposition that systematic knowledge should be gained from numbers.… They articulate the ways we organise and make sense of the World.’9
Two case studies are now used to demonstrate the gulf between rhetoric and practice, and how this gulf was managed by the Society in order to convince its members and a wider audience of citizens that the Society was indeed scientific. In spite of the rhetorical emphasis on the morality of measurement, the two expeditions, both originating in 1834,
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995); G. Gooday, The morals of measurement: accuracy, irony, and trust in late Victorian electrical practice (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2004); N. J. Thrift and N. Bingham,‘Some new instructions for travellers: the geography of Bruno Latour and Michel Serres’, in Thinking space (ed. M. Crang and N. J. Thrift), pp. 281–301 (Routledge, London, 2001).
3 B. Latour, Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987); B. Latour, Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005);
and especially B. Latour,‘On Actor Network Theory: a few clarifications’, Soziale Welt 47, 369–381 (1996), at p. 373.
4 A. Blok and T. E. Jensen, Bruno Latour: hybrid thoughts in a hybrid world (Routledge, New York, 2011), pp. 27 and 39.
5 E. Rae, C. Souch and C. W. Withers,‘Instruments in the hands of others: the life and liveliness of instruments of British geographical exploration, c.1860–c.1930’, in Geography, technology and instruments of exploration (ed. F. MacDonald and C.W.
Withers), p. 158 (Routledge, London, 2015).
6 P. Cline Cohen, A calculating people: the spread of numeracy in early America (Routledge, New York, 1999), pp. 205–206.
7 I. Hacking, The taming of chance (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990), p. 61.
8 T. M. Porter, Trust in numbers: the pursuit of objectivity in science and public life (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995), quoted in S. Shapin, Never pure: historical studies of science as if it was produced by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibility and authority (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2010), p. 30.
9 M. Poovey, A history of the modern fact (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998), p. XV.
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serve to illustrate the contention that instruments had agency simply by being present, as both expeditions were reported in the Society’s Journal and both were praised as being successful, although one produced credible instrumental results and the other did not. Whereas the two expeditions chosen here took place in the 1830s, the argument has been supported by several other case studies throughout the period 1830–1914.10
From its inception in 1830 the RGS was a central institution for the promotion of geography, being situated physically and culturally at the heart of the British Empire.11Felix Driver gives a balanced view of the RGS’s attitude toward imperialism. He quotes from the RGS initial prospectus, which describes ‘geography’s importance in conferring just and distinct notions of physical and political relations of our globe.’12 He writes:‘RGS’s founding programme was a continuation of the Banksian project by other means.’13 Livingstone asserts that the RGS was the‘cultural power base of the English geographical confraternity’.14
As has been well documented, the Society set out its intention for an instrumental culture in thefirst edition of its Journal in 1831. The third out of six aims ran as follows: ‘To procure specimens of such instruments as experience has shown to be most useful, and best adapted to the compendious stock of a traveller, by consulting which, he may make himself familiar with their use.’15However, no instrumental purchase was made until the end of 1832, and this was a pantagraph, acquired for the draughtsman in the drawing office in London, and so was unrelated to the educational aim.16 However, whereas this specific pedagogic aim was never realized as originally envisaged, instruments began to be lent out to travellers for expeditions from 1834. Over the course of its first century the Society procured about 1500 instruments to be lent to 436 expeditions.17 This form of support became a signature activity, stamping the seal of approval on the recipients.
A useful concept for the approach of the RGS in itsfirst years is ‘Humboldtian’ science, as proposed by Susan Cannon.18Humboldt’s instrumental practices have been linked with his application of number across multiple fields.19 There is much evidence of the influence of Humboldt at the RGS, as is remarked on by Driver, who notes the awkward compromise between Galton’s ‘get up and go’ style and Herschel’s scientific aspirations.20 Robert Schomburgk, the second of our two travellers, wrote in 1833: ‘Amongst the expeditions which since Columbus’ times have been undertaken to the new continent shine conspicuously
10 J. Wess,‘Role of instruments in exploration: a study of the Royal Geographical Society 1830–1930’, PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 2018, pp. 145–185,https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/31367.
11 F. Driver, Geography militant: cultures of exploration and empire (Blackwell, Oxford, 2001), p. 25; R. Stafford, Scientist of empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, scientific exploration and Victorian imperialism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1989), pp. 211–212.
12 Driver, op. cit. (note 11), p. 40–44.
13 Ibid., p. 46.
14 D. N. Livingstone, The geographical tradition: episodes in the history of a contested enterprise. (Wiley–Blackwell, Chichester, 1992), p. 159.
15 ‘Prospectus of the Royal Geographical Society’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 1, viii (1831).
16 Council Minutes (hereafter CM) 10 November 1832, 15 December 1832;‘Instrument no. 12’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 21, XIV (1851); CM 9 March 1833. All manuscripts cited in this paper are available at the Foyle Reading Room, Royal Geographical Society- Institute of British Geographers, London,https://www.rgs.org/about/our-collections/the-foyle-reading-room/.
17 Wess and Withers, op. cit. (note 1), p. 228.
18 S. Cannon, Science in culture: the early Victorian period (Dawson and Science History Publications, New York, 1978), p. 96; R. Yeo,‘An idol of the market-place: Baconianism in nineteenth century Britain’, Hist. Sci. 23, 266 (1985).
19 A. Godlewska,‘From Enlightenment vision to modern science? Humboldt’s visual thinking’, in Geography and Enlightenment (ed. D. N. Livingstone and C. W. Withers), pp. 236–280 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996).
20 Driver, op. cit. (note 11), p. 51.
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Von Humboldt’s travels.’21Humboldt received a Premium Medal from the Society in 1839, and thirty years later there was a monument erected to him.22Burnett argues that‘Invoking Humboldt suggested an explorer was working within what many thought was the most reliable and measurement-centred geographical science of the day.’23 Outwardly the RGS endorsed and celebrated this new scientific approach, which has been described as ‘a major turning point in the scientific culture of Britain.’24 Aspiration and activity were not always aligned, however.
The expenditure varied according to the financial pressures of the time, so that during the 1840s—a decade of crisis—the provision could become no more than ‘furnishing the common instruments forfinding position’.25Nevertheless, the practice continued and the aspiration for well-equipped expeditions was made explicit in works such as the Secretary Julian Jackson’s What to observe in 1841.26
EXPEDITIONS UNDER CONSIDERATION
Before 1834 the Society had only sponsored one expedition with £50 raised from private subscription in order to search for John and James Clarke Ross.27 In a major departure, two expeditions were considered for sponsorship at the start of that year. One of these was to Delagoa Bay in South East Africa, a project driven principally by William Desborough Cooley, who wrote on the desirability of exploring the area in 1833:
If the path from Delagoa Bay to Zumbo were once trodden by a British traveller the solution of the most interesting problems of African geography might be considered to be in progress. The expedition would yield at little cost and without hazard a large stock of valuable information and of consequences far more greater importance to commerce than any other which could be directed to any other portion of the African continent.28
However, at that stage it was decided to provide only £50 as it‘was going to an area where there was already civilisation and there would be commercial interchange’.29Throughout the whole of the nineteenth century and beyond, areas were of particular interest if they could further the‘triumphant march of progress and civilisation’.30In this case it appears that the presence of existing‘civilisation’ was used to minimize funding.
The other expedition, to British Guyana (sometimes spelt Guiana), was supported for a number of reasons, including the classic‘almost an entire blank on our maps’. There was
21 R. H. Schomburgk, Remarks to accompany a map of the rivers Orinoco, Essequibo Branco etc., JMS 6/9, 1833.
22 CM 22 April 1839; CM 8 November 1869.
23 Burnett, op. cit. (note 2), p. 15.
24 C. Smith and M. N. Wise, Energy and empire: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, 1824–1907 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1989), p. 93.
25 Wess and Withers, op. cit. (note 1), p. 225.
26 J. Jackson, What to observe, or, the traveller’s remembrancer (John Marsden, London, 1841), pp. 454–455; I. Keighren, C. W. Withers and B. Bell, Travels into print: exploration, writing, and publishing with John Murray 1773–1859 (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2015), p. 62; CM 3 April 1840, CM 27 April 1840; CM 8 June 1840; CM 9 May 1842; CM 22 December 1845;
Taylor CB3/742.
27 CM 16 November 1832.
28 W. D. Cooley,‘A memoir on the civilization of the tribes inhabiting the highlands near Dalagôa Bay’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 3, 310–324 (1833).
29 CM 25 January 1834.
30 Rev. Thomas Lewis,‘The Ancient Kingdom of Kongo’, Journal Manuscript (JMS)/2/341, 1902.
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interest in the source of rivers, minerals, and vegetation, and a concern that the French might get therefirst.31These were thefirst expeditions supported by the Society and so constitute an important step in the construction of its identity. Their success would be crucial to the continuation of this method of sponsoring exploration, and they would be important for the laying down of working practices.32
Already in the short interval between the two expeditions setting out, the intention of providing a generous supply of instruments in the Humboltian tradition had faltered somewhat. The first expedition was bestowed with an allowance specifically for instrumental purchase that bought a pocket sextant, two artificial horizons, a mountain barometer, a syphon barometer, a Daniell’s hygrometer, a reflecting compass, two thermometers, two measuring tapes, a telescope, a pocket chronometer, a Schmalcalder ( prismatic) compass, several pocket compasses and two or three small thermometers.33 For the second expedition not all the instruments were purchased, and some were provided by the leader or borrowed from third parties. Nonetheless, in both cases the instruments and the results from them were central to expectations for the accrual of knowledge.34
At a Council meeting on 21 June 1834 both expeditions were given approval simultaneously by the RGS, and it was decided to ask the Government for assistance.35On 9 July 1834 Under Secretary Hay from Downing Street wrote to the Hon. J. K. Stewart of the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury, sending an application for consideration. Regarding both expeditions: ‘advantages to the cause of geographical science cannot fail to arise from exploring the countries which it is intended to visit’.
A sum of £1000 over two years was requested for which the Society would be answerable.36 A letter from Downing Street on 26 August 1834 awarded the expeditions
£1000 if the RGS were to put in £500, allowing both to proceed.37 The RGS, therefore, had already invested considerable resource, part of it in supplying instruments. This was an occasion during the nineteenth century on which the Government supplied significant funding.38 Several authors have remarked on the parsimonious attitude of the British Government at this time, but these expeditions provide a counter-example.39
However, it was not enough simply to provide instruments: the Society needed to ensure that the travellers were capable of using them, that the terrain and climate were suitable, that there would not be dangers posed by animal or human obstruction—the latter sometimes in political form—and that the instruments could be maintained and calibrated. There were thus
31 CM 25 January 1834.
32 CM 21 June 1834.
33 CM 18 October 1834; L. Fialovszky, Surveying instruments and their operational principles (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2013), p. 207; C. R. Markham, Thefifty years’ work of the Royal Geographical Society (John Murray, London, 1881), p. 112; C. A.
Schmalcalder, British Patent no. 3545 (1812).
34 CM 24 November 1834; P. Rivière, The Guiana travels of Robert Schomburgk 1835–1844, 2 vols (Ashgate for the Hakluyt Society, Aldershot, 2006); R. M. Martin, Retrospect of Philosophical, Mechanical, Chemical, and Agricultural Discoveries, vol. 4 (Royal Society, London, 1809).
35 CM 21 June 1834.
36 CB/2 Colonial Office.
37 In J. E. Alexander,‘Notes on the intended expedition to Delagoa Bay’, JMS 2/5, 1834.
38 R. MacLeod, Government and expertise: specialists, administrators and professionals, 1860–1919 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003).
39 R. Yeo, Science in the public sphere: natural knowledge in British culture, 1800–60 (Ashgate, London, 2001); J. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: useful knowledge and polite culture (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003); R. MacLeod,‘Introduction’, in Government and expertise: specialists, administrators and professionals, 1860–1919 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003).
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many potential pitfalls to be overcome before meaningful numerical results could be relied on.
The RGS council,firmly based in London, could be unaware of the obstacles to obtaining this information in environments totally different from their own, but expected it from those they had sanctioned. In using these two case studies it is the issue of instrumental competence of the travellers that had the principal effect on the instrumental outcomes.
It has been noted that the RGS Council suggested in 1830 that a standing committee be appointed to communicate with intending travellers to give them advice on what to examine—‘Geographical Desiderata’.40 Macdonald and Withers point out that the second volume of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society contained an ambition for a
‘Travellers’ Manual’, but, as for several other intentions, this was not fully realized for over twenty years.41 Thus in 1834 there was no guarantee that travellers would be able to exploit the resource embedded in their instruments. It transpired that the two men chosen to lead these expeditions—James Alexander and Robert Schomburgk—displayed widely differing levels of ability in this particular skill, allowing insights into strategies that the RGS improvised to create knowledge from very different levels of numerical data, and ultimately into the role of instruments at the RGS during this period. These insights allow the agency of instruments to be viewed more widely than previously.
CHOICE OF LEADERS AND INSTRUCTIONS
There is no record in the minutes regarding the choice of Captain James Alexander (figure 1) to lead the Delagoa Bay expedition. Alexander was a professional soldier educated after university at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He served in various wars in the 1820s. Following his association with the RGS and South Africa he pursued a military career in Canada in the 1840s, going on tofight in the Crimean War in 1855. He was a collector of birds, plants and fossils.42 Notwithstanding a military training, his strength lay in descriptive prose. In his publication of 1838 following his expedition he wrote:‘there was nothing arid or barren in the landscape, but a verdant carpet, variegated with gay colours, was spread before us’.43It has been suggested that Alexander was working in the long-established literary tradition of travel writing.44
In a communication from Alexander in 1831, ‘Notes on West Indies and America in answer to queries of the Sec. of RGS’, there was no indication of instrument use.45 All Alexander’s data were from previous sources. Measurements were not precise: ‘some eighty miles’, ‘very moist’. He told of changes of polarity of magnetic needles near cannon fire but this had been related to him by someone else. The work was not published. The only paper to have appeared in the Society’s Journal by 1834 was a travelogue containing a vivid account of cannibalism in Guyana.46Only once in this paper
40 CM 4 December 1830.
41 ‘Front matter’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 2, i–viii (1832); F. MacDonald and C. W. Withers (eds), Geography, technology and instruments of exploration (Routledge, London, 2015), p. 7.
42 C. Plug,https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=39(accessed 23 July 2021).
43 J. E. Alexander, with assistance from W. O. Ogilby and J. Gould,‘Report of an expedition of discovery, through the countries of the Great Namáquas, Boschmans, and the Hill Dámaras, in South Africa’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 8, 1–28 (1838), at p. 2.
44 M. Vanek,‘The uses of travel: science, empire and change in 18th-century travel writing’, Wiley Online Libr. Lit. Compass 12, 555–564 (2015); C. W. J. Withers and I. Keighren, ‘Travels into print: authoring, editing and narratives of travel and exploration, c.1815—c.1857’. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 36, 560–573 (2011).
45 J. E. Alexander,‘Notes on West Indies and America in answer to queries of the Sec. of RGS’, JMS 4/3, 1831.
46 J. E. Alexander,‘Notes of two expeditions up the Essequibo and Mazaroony Rivers in the years 1830 and 1831’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 2, 65–72 (1832), at p. 69.
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did he mention taking observations using boiling point thermometers at the top and bottom of a waterfall, but then disregarded these when he went on to estimate the drop, so there was no evidence that he was already a capable producer of instrumental results.
Figure 1. Lithograph of James Alexander by Richard James Lane, 1827. Source: National Portrait Gallery, London, no. D21949. (Online version in colour.)
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The Journal for 1834 contained a paper‘Expeditions into the Interior of South Africa’
which described the proposed Delagoa Bay expedition together with another South African project being undertaken by a group from the Cape led by a Dr Andrew Smith.47 The RGS was constantly endeavouring to portray itself as both scientific and adventurous, so together with the emphasis on instruments and numerical results it stressed the romantic aspirations of its own expedition. Whereas the expedition from Cape Colony was primarily commercial in character, ‘Ours consists of only one adventurous traveller … his object is purely that of a pioneer, to push beyond previous lines.48 The paper then ‘inserted Alexander’s instructions’ and although it is slightly ambiguous whether the following description of how a traveller should use his instruments applied to both South African expeditions, there are no reasons to believe otherwise.
The belief in the morality of measurement at the Society at this time is made explicit in the instructions given to the travellers, which consist of very detailed and precise technical details regarding instrumental observations:
Assiduous application of every instrumental means for determination of 3 aspects of latitude, longitude and elevation…. Meridian observations for latitude, lunar distances for longitude, practised daily. Barometer and thermometer,… magnetic variation observed by a comparison of astronomical means…. Index errors … zero point of the sympeisometer…. Observation books … frequent comparisons … index errors be kept separate from observations which should be separate from calculations… don’t alter the hands of the chronometer, keep other watches at Greenwich time.
The paper was signed by several leading members of the Society including John Herschel and Thomas MacLear on 23 June 1834.49 This paper also contains the first indication that the Delagoa Bay expedition was not going according to plan, as‘Captain Alexander can only now be arriving at the Cape and cannot start until next April’.
Francis Beaufort, another prominentfigure at the Society, wrote in August also with advice:
‘Give him instructions to keep all his rough observations in order to be worked hereafter and you can’t emphasise this point too strongly. Let him have a good astronomical object glass, and he should lose no opportunity of observing eclipse occultations because he may not have an opportunity of working these.’50 The sum of £27 11s was spent on new instruments. These were: a pocket sextant, two artificial horizons one of which was glass, a mountain barometer by Jones, a syphon barometer by Robinson, a Daniell’s hygrometer, a reflecting compass, two thermometers, and two measuring tapes. Alexander already had a 2.5 foot telescope, Schmacalder’s compass, several pocket compasses, and two or three small thermometers.
Beaufort commented: ‘I wish we had a few hundred degrees of any of the three foreign continents laid down half as well as the above instruments are adequate to do’. He also advocated taking the essential parts of the Nautical Almanac for 1834 and 1835 taken out and stitched in pliable leather, together with some book of problems and the Requisite Tables.51 The instructions Alexander received personally were written on 1 September 1834. He was advised not to arrive before the end of the rains in early May. The main object was to explore
47 ‘Expeditions into the interior of South Africa’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 4, 362–374 (1834).
48 Ibid., at p. 362.
49 Ibid., at p. 374.
50 Beaufort, Letter to Maconochie, 17 August 1834, Correspondence Bundle (CB) 2/50.
51 Ibid.
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the river Manissa which flows into King George’s river as named by the English, ‘so as to ascertain whether or not it be identical to the river of the interior which the Bechuanas call Mariqua’. On his arrival he was to select a guide and interpreter from among the chiefs.
Promptitude… is especially recommended to you as delay on the coast is likely to give rise to numerous unforeseen difficulties. … Keep an exact register of astronomical and meteorological observations and then you will note carefully the variation of the compass, with bearings and distance of every remarkable point in view.… The upper regions will be indicated by the natives, follow the line of densest population. The natives recognise hospitality as a moral obligation. Travel by boat and canoe up river to 50 miles where oxen can be found.52
The reliance on indigenous people is evident.
Alexander was to travel with Admiral Campbell, who was going to the Cape.53The seven or eight months in getting there and being at the Cape were to be spent‘acquiring expertness in the use of the astronomical and other instruments and in studying the Sichuanan Language’.54This assumption that Alexander would learn instrumental techniques en route is not entirely unexpected, given the various means by which scientific servicemen received instruction.55 Admiralty presence at the RGS was substantial in the early years, which has been remarked by several authors.56 However, Admiralty presence at the RGS reveals that the Society was not confident that Alexander already possessed instrumental ability.
Following the pledge of money from the Government mentioned above, the Council was able to turn its attention to the Guyana expedition. Unlike for Delagoa Bay, there was competition to lead the British Guyana expedition. William Hilhouse, a resident of Demerara and a surveyor, was ‘very anxious on the subject and he himself made many journeys into the interior in part prosecution of the object in view.’57 He had had two papers published in the Society’s Journal.58 However, at the Council meeting of 25 January 1834 it was deemed that he was not sufficiently capable ‘as he gives no latitudes, it is to be feared that he is not competent to take astronomical observations’. The meeting went on to discuss his rival: ‘Besides him, however, Mr. (Robert) Schomburgk a prodigious traveller, now in Totalen and who has proved his qualifications by communications to the Admiralty, the RGS and the Horticultural Society.’ In October the Council stood pledged to the Government over the Guyana expedition and Schomburgk was told of the success of his application.59
Schomburgk (figure 2) was born the son of a protestant minister in Prussian Saxony. After a failed business career he took the initiative to survey Anegada, a Virgin Island, at his
52 Alexander, JMS/2/5; CM 18 October 1834.
53 CM 14 August 1834.
54 CM 18 October 1834.
55 Simon Naylor and Matthew Goodman,‘Historical geographies of meteorology at the colonial observatories’, in Weather, climate and the geographical imagination (ed. Martin Mahony and Samuel Randalls), pp. 25–42 (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2020).
56 Driver, op. cit. (note 11), pp. 34 and 41; Burnett, op. cit. (note 2), p. 87; F. Driver,‘Distance and disturbance: travel, exploration and knowledge in the nineteenth century’, Trans. R. Hist. Soc. 14, 73–92 (2004), at pp. 86–88; R. Cock, ‘Scientific servicemen in the Royal Navy and the professionalisation of science 1816–1855’, in Science and beliefs: from natural philosophy to natural science 1700–1900 (ed. D. M. Knight and M. D. Eddy), pp. 95–112 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005).
57 CM 25 January 1834.
58 W. Hilhouse,‘Journal of a voyage up the Massarooney in 1831’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 4, 25–40; W. Hilhouse, ‘Memoir on the Warow Land of British Guiana’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 4, 321–333 (1834).
59 CM 18 October 1834.
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Figure 2. Lithograph of Robert Schomburgk by Maxim Gauci, after Eden Upton Eddis, 1840. Source: National Portrait Gallery, London, no. D40577. (Online version in colour.)
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own expense in 1830. The results were impressive and by 1834 he had a sound reputation. He went on to survey on behalf of the British Government and was knighted in 1845.60 His devotion to obtaining numerical results was in keeping with the relatively new Humboldtian approach.
On 24 November 1834 the Council discussed the instructions, which identified two distinct aims: ‘to investigate the physical and astronomical geography of the interior, and to connect the [ pointions] of Humboldt’. The second of these undertakings was not to be done until the first had been completed. At that stage the Society was to commit £900:
£600 to kit it out, then £300 would follow during the next two years. Schomburgk was to report to Sir Carmichael Smyth, Governor of the colony, for the time being. Copyright would remain with the Society. ‘Having thus fully explained the views of the Society something must necessarily be left, in conclusion, to your own judgement and discretion’.61
A letter from Frederick William Beechey to Beaufort on 15 April 1835 discussed instruments for Schomburgk:
I shall name the instruments which I should think sufficient for this gentleman …. I should think a 6 inch sextant, artificial horizon, pocket chronometer, would be all that he would require for determining his situation. If he was a careful man and knew how to use a mountain barometer he should have one to accompany him on his journey and another to remain in the possession of some friend who would keep a register of it, at the port on the continent which he starts from. If he breaks the first, which I think very probable, he will have the spare one to fall back on. Say then 2 barometers by Newman, 4 thermometers 6 inches long in brass cylinders. A Schmacalder compass of 4 inch and a wooden tripod stand with levelling plate attached. I think this preferable to a theodolite as the less weight he is encumbered with and fewer instruments the better.
If he is a sensible man he will accomplish all that is expected of him with these instruments, If he is not he is better without any more.62
Schomburgk’s instructions were comprehensive. He was required to report on rivers, plants, animals and inhabitants between longitudes 55 and 62 W. He was to take astronomical determinations of a reasonable number of its principal points. He was to note soil and climate, origins and courses of its rivers and whether they were navigable; then he was to proceed further into the interior and‘compare your results with those of Humboldt’.63
REPORTS OF THE EXPEDITIONS
Quite soon there were indications that Alexander was not ideally suited to receiving instructions. Sometime in 1834 before he left London he sent the Society a paper entitled
‘Notes on expedition intended to penetrate from Delagoa Bay into the interior of South Africa’. In this he wrote: ‘The traveller may be inclined to risk his own life, yet he ought constantly to keep in view that if he is encouraged and patronised in his undertakings by others, that they expect he will not undertake anything rashly.’ He expected to be ready for the journey in early 1835, ‘So it is of little consequence what time I reach the Cape this
60 Rivière, op. cit. (note 34).
61 CM 24 November 1834.
62 F. W. Beechey, Letter to F. Beaufort, 15 April 1835, CB/2.
63 CM 24 November 1834.
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year. If I go by way of Egypt to the Cape I could touch at Tangiers and I have certain commissions for the Royal Asiatic Society, but these I might transfer to some other persons if the Royal Geographical Society think I ought to go more directly to the Cape.’64 Alexander wrote while en route in the ship Thalia. He was using his instruments, but not effectively. In a letter dated 10 October 1834 he stated:‘Thermometer sometimes 90 on the quarterdeck, at 8am, and 100 in the midshipmen’s berth’. ‘The chronometer—an Arnolds—in charge of the master is an exceptional time keeper. Barometrical and thermometrical observations have been taken 3 times a day since we left and the temperature of the sea and the air under the canopy. The thermometer was 86, the water 83 at noon’. ‘On 25th Sept the Admiral had through an excellent Dollond telescope thought he saw a mass of snow… but it turned out to be lava’.65On 24 October Alexander wrote a lengthy dispatch relating his daily routine. One of his occupations was practising with the sextant.66
Alexander’s communication ‘Voyage Along the West Coast of Africa 1834’ was divided into nine sections. Thefirst part was descriptive, including five sets of pressure, temperature and wind direction at the end for a period spanning twelve days. The second part related some previous measurements of temperature at Tenerife. In the fourth a peak of‘between 2000 and 3000 feet high’ was described. The fifth part gave five consecutive days of meteorological observations.‘On 6thOctober the thermometer was at 80 under the awning, with Daniell’s hygrometer I found the dew point was 70. A Jones barometer on the 5thstood at 30.06’.67 Crucially, he left no record of where these observations had been taken, thus invalidating them. Then came a period when there were no regular observations. There is no mention of latitude, longitude or variation of the compass, never mind the eclipse occultations advocated by Beaufort.68 He used his telescope to inspect the coastline whereas it was intended that he should make astronomical observations.69Alexander was giving longitude as ‘circa’, even though he was equipped with instruments sufficient to determine it to within a minute.70 All his information, such as a list of rivers between St John’s and Delagoa Bay, was from previous sources.71
The situation deteriorated. On 30 April 1835 and on several succeeding dates in the summer and autumn Alexander gave an account of the Kaffir war and ‘frontier business’.
Among this were descriptive phrases such as‘the mimosa waved in the breeze’, and lines of poetry, but no instrumental observations or progress in following his instructions.72
‘Schomburgk on the other hand has entered on his field of enquiry and two detailed reports had been received’ according to the report from the Council in 1836.73Prior to his expedition to Guyana, Schomburgk had submitted a paper concerning his techniques to accompany a paper concerning results, the former of which was not published.74 This demonstrates a preference for results rather than methods in published accounts.75
64 Alexander, op. cit. (note 37).
65 J. E. Alexander,‘Voyage along the west coast of Africa in 1834’, JMS 2/6, 1834.
66 Alexander, op. cit. (note 65), pt 2.
67 Alexander, op. cit. (note 65).
68 Ibid.
69 Op. cit. (note 65), 6 October 1834.
70 J. E. Alexander,‘Notes on West Indies and America’, JMS 2/8, 1831.
71 Alexander, op. cit. (note 70), letter, March 1835.
72 Alexander, op. cit. (note 70).
73 ‘At the General Meeting, May 16, 1836: Report from the Council’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 6, 3–16 (1836).
74 JMS 5/2; R. Schomburgk,‘Remarks on Anegada’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 2 152–170 (1832).
75 Rivière, op. cit. (note 34), p. 7, n. 1.
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Schomburgk recognized, overcame, and furthermore demonstrated how he overcame the various pitfalls. He wrote:
I placed the graphometer and took a sight to the point where the beach took a turning having fixed a stave with a signal to it. I measured its subtense with the chain, making it a rule throughout my surveys to take the end of the chain myself. Well acquainted with the fallibility of the needle I measured a base line and took from both ends signals to the points where I had been previously, so I guarded against errors… using the rules of plain geometry. Manyfold were the difficulties; being obliged to fix my instrument in the ( pond?) and taking the angles from thence while standing up to my neck in stagnant water.76
In this passage he demonstrated personal responsibility, awareness of instrumental fallibility, knowledge of plain geometry, and a willingness to go to extremes to get good measurements.
The RGS archives contain pages of observations of latitude, longitude and variation from Schomburgk in the interior of British Guyana in 1835–6. He rated his chronometer by a comparison of astronomical observations to find apparent time, finding it to be 23 seconds ahead on average. As well as latitude by double altitude and the demanding longitude by lunar distance, he made meteorological observations at regular times of day, taking averages. He took a rainfall record and made general observations.77 In his first report of 1835 he determined height by baseline of 1523 yards. He gives latitudes to a second, longitude to a minute, and compass directions to a degree. Superficially the reports appear similar to those of Alexander in that they contain a considerable quantity of description.
However, in Schomburgk’s case the description is interspersed with numerical results of instrumental observation.78
Schomburgk’s communications reveal a constant engagement with instruments, not only with their use, but with their replacement and repair. In June 1836 Schomburgk requested a chronometer and circle which were to be supplied. Two weeks later it was reported that he had sent a mountain barometer home for repair.79By mid November, seven letters had been received from Schomburgk with his astronomical and meteorological observations.
He reported that a repeating circle, mountain barometer, and chronometer had reached him in good order. He had also been lent an Englefield barometer by Mr Hilhouse, so was
‘well provided with instruments’.80 The following February Schomburgk requested a barometer be sent with a Mr Falconer on the Highbury, in lieu of one lent by him to the expedition.81
There is also a bound book of observations by Schomburgk starting 17 July 1838 from a slightly later expedition (figure 3). He took latitude from double altitudes of two stars on 3 August. He therefore found that his watch was fast of apparent time by 8 min 56 s. On 12 August his watch was fast of apparent time by 4 min 10 s by observation of four stars. He took the mean of 14 observations to find the latitude of San Joaquin. He determined longitude by lunar distances, also taking 14 observations and finding the mean. He recorded variation of the compass by comparison with astronomical observation. The
76 Schomburgk, JMS 5/2.
77 Schomburgk, RHS/2–3.
78 Schomburgk, JMS 6/13.
79 CM 13 June 1836; CM 27 June 1836.
80 CM 14 November 1836.
81 CM 27 February 1837; CM 12 February 1838.
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Figure 3. Pages from Robert Schomburgk’s observations, 1838. Source: Royal Geographical Society. (Online version in colour.)
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results of these detailed observations allowed him to determine the positions of the mouths of the rivers Xuruma, Pirara and Hahu.82
RECEPTION OF THE EXPEDITIONS AT THERGS
The Council began to lose patience with Alexander in the autumn of 1835.83A letter dated 20 October from the RGS Council, but unsigned, reads‘the Council has no doubt that under the circumstances you have been unavoidably detained thus far. At the same time itfinds it a duty to remind you that the specific service for which it placed certain resources at your disposal was an expedition from Delagoa Bay… and it relies therefore on you appropriating them for this purpose and for this purpose only.’ It goes on to suggest he takes up military employment there and repays only the cost of getting him there.84In 1835, £437 had been spent on paying 30 people, and £351 on other things, which included £119 for goods, £67 for the wagon, and
£93 for saddles, the rest being made up with many smaller purchases.85
Alexander appears to have asked his friends to support him in his reluctance to pursue the given instructions. A letter from Major Mitchell Kitt, Surveyor General in Cape Colony, to Alexander on 28 February 1836 reads:‘Had you been an aspirant for fame whom caprice or irresolution had indeed to batter a retreat, the case would be widely different. Whereas you are too well known as one to whom almost the whole of the Earth’s crust is familiar. For the idea ever to occur that either one or other of the above motives had influenced your determination… Be satisfied with your already well earned and more than ordinary fame as a traveller.’86On 2 May, Doctor Murray, Chief of Medical Staff at the Cape, wrote‘I do not think our own views and opinions differ about it in any material degree. I am confident therefore that if I were the person situated as you are in regard to the undertaking this exploratory expedition in the neighbourhood of Delagoa Bay you would do all in your power to dissuade me from it.’87 An undated letter with an undecipherable signature but possibly from Benjamin D’Urban, then governor of Cape Colony, states: ‘I entirely agree with his friends and am most ready to release him altogether from his duties. I always considered it to be an ill-advised caper, likely to be attended with fatal results.’88
On 7 May 1836 Alexander wrote a letter from the Cape to Maconochie, the then Secretary of the RGS, headed ‘Why I am still here’.89 The Zoolahs had risen on the Portuguese at Delagoa and murdered the Governor and some others. For 12 months he had been the aide de Camp of D’Urban. The instruments he still had by him. Their value would be easily realized. ‘It will be a Black Day when I leave certain warm friends but we must be firm, the die is cast. My leave expired in February last and instead of any boon in the shape of local rank, or promotion, I expect I will be shelved on half pay. Instead of thanks for the 9 months war we must seem to be in very bad odour.’ He blames the anti-colonial London Mission for this. The London Missionary Society was set up by Congregationalists in 1795
82 R. Schomburgk,‘Astronomical observation, meteorological observation heights at which various trees grow, position of San Joachim 1835–1837’, RHS/2–3.
83 CM 19 October 1835.
84 J. E. Alexander,‘Papers concerning the expedition to S. W. Africa’ JMS 2/11, 1836.
85 Ibid.
86 M. Kitt, Letter to J. Alexander, 28 February 1836, op. cit. (note 84).
87 Murray, Letter to J. Alexander, 2 May 1836, op. cit. (note 84).
88 Ibid.
89 J. E. Alexander, op. cit. (note 84).
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and had become established in Africa by the 1810s. It was gaining a reputation at this time to some extent because of John Philip, a minister who had strong liberal views. He was important in introducing‘a new wave of humanitarian liberalism at the Cape Colony of the 1820s and 1830s’ which could have been viewed as anti-colonial.90
A letter from D’Urban on the same day put an end to ideas of the original plan.
It is quite clear and indisputable that by a combination of circumstances the projected journey of discovery from Delagoa Bay in 1835 was rendered utterly impracticable and out of the question.
I think also that what has occurred at Delagoa since it was projected has so changed the basis of the project that it has ceased to be any longer practicable upon its original scheme. Hence the question resolves itself—as I conceive into that of ‘What Was He Sent For—His Own Interest and Satisfaction’. If the due consideration of this point should lead him to abandon the prosecution of‘discovery’ it appears that he will be expected by redress, and is himself ready to repay the expense incurred in sending him thus far, i.e. from England to Simon’s bay… since the presents for natives and instruments for the journey are of course transferable for those purposes to whosoever the Society may substitute for the undertaking.91
A letter from Woodbine Parish to John Washington on 24 August 183692suggests that the RGS must accept D’Urban’s opinion that the original plan is impracticable.
Alexander wrote to the RGS Secretary, now John Washington, on 15 August 1836. He wanted to wait until the healthy season of 1837. As Natal was ‘not expedient to be recognized as a British Settlement’ he had decided to alter his route. Doctor Smith of the Cape Colony expedition had now penetrated behind Delagoa to latitude 23° 260. Alexander claimed that Maconochie had suggested to him that if Smith had done what was expected of himself, should he go there at all?‘And do nothing hastily’. He had a tempting offer to remain here permanently. The Council of the RGS had very kindly said that
if the prosecution of an expedition of discovery would interfere with my advancement it would be advisable that I should give up the idea of exploring the interior.
Notwithstanding all this I still continued on with the same determination to endeavour to do something for the honour of the RGS. I have now taken upon myself the responsibility of visiting the country north of the mouth of the Orange River.
He would set off with wagons on 1 September. He emphasized by underlining that this would be‘Useful labour not recreation’.93
Alexander began spending again for his new project. His‘good but not extravagant’ outfit exceeded funds by £167 according to a letter of 27 September 1836. This letter contained sketch maps which have been commented on in pencil by a referee. His sketch maps are accompanied by comments such as: ‘Latitude how determined?’, ‘Wooded?’, ‘Which is north?’, ‘Scale?’ His description of ‘delightfully situated on a plain’ was rebuffed with ‘Plain—
how high?’ When he gave a height such as ‘5000 feet’, the referee asked ‘How ascertained?
5000 feet eh? At 60 or 70 miles distance?’, ‘Lat 28 32 how is this possible? (figure 4)’94
90 E. Elbourne, Blood ground: colonialism, missions, and the contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2002), pp. 233–258.
91 Alexander, op. cit. (note 84).
92 Alexander, op. cit. (note 84).
93 Ibid.
94 J. E. Alexander,‘Namaqualand expedition letters from Alexander’, JMS 2/13.
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Figure 4. Sketch map by Alexander, late 1836. Source: Alexander, JMS 2/13, Royal Geographical Society, London.
(Online version in colour.)
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A letter from the Treasury to the Secretary Captain Maconachie, dated 26 January 1837 stated: ‘My Lords do not feel themselves authorized to sanction any further charge upon the public and cannot relieve the Society of making the payment to the Board of Ordnance at the Cape.’95
Schomburgk did not have an entirely uneventful reception at the Society either, in spite of his obvious instrumental abilities. However, in his case the criticisms came principally from his rival, Hilhouse. Mr Carmichael Smyth, the Governor of British Guyana, wrote on 5 August 1835 informing Alexander Maconochie, then Secretary of the Society, that Schomburgk had arrived in Demerara. Carmichael Smyth commented that‘from what I have seen of him he is exactly the sort of man to carry the views of the society into effect’. He then went on to complain that Schomburgk was not adequately provided for as the money from the Government had not arrived. Carmichael Smyth had lent him £150 to feed him and equip the expedition.‘He is, however, lamentably at a loss for instruments having nothing more, or at least very little, beyond a pocket sextant’. On 15 June the money had still not been received. The Secretary of the RGS replied that Schomburgk was to make enquiries into the physical and mathematical geography of the country, but at present they were not sending instruments as he had some of his own. Money would be sent to make up the loan from Sir Carmichael Smyth but the money from the Government had still not been provided.96
In August 1835 Hilhouse complained to the RGS that Schomburgk had set out a month too late, and arrived three months too late. He therefore had no time to pursue his main objective, the source of the Esquibo, and to ascend Table Land in the centre of Guyana, ‘which is unknown to the world’. He was insufficiently equipped. ‘I have no doubt of the accuracy of his survey and observations but for want of instruments he has taken no heights even boiling water would have given him a rough guess. He has been stopped by a fall of 20 feet, 2000 feet would not have stopped me.’ Hilhouse believed that the Corentyne was the wrong choice of river. In a later letter of 12 April 1836 Hilhouse had to admit that Schomburgk was‘not unqualified for his task’. Hilhouse was still pursuing the Esquibo project: ‘I wanted him in Esquibo this dry season, if he gets through this safe and sound he will require no further instructions. It was the route I proposed for myself had my means allowed it.’97
It was noted at the RGS that Hilhouse was not to be trusted to give a fair assessment of Schomburgk, having wanted to undertake the expedition himself.98Maconochie wrote to John Washington,99 who would become the next Secretary, on 1 July 1836 disappointed that the reports of Schomburgk had been unfavourable. However, his work had been ‘very correct, Captain Daniels thinks highly of him, and he had acted precisely in accordance with instructions’.
However, the RGS had also problems with Schomburgk pursuing his own interests. In June 1836 Schomburgk had to be reminded of the purpose of his expedition. The Dutch had already surveyed where he wanted to go.‘He had better read his first instructions carefully and act up to the spirit if not the letter of these.’100In February the following year the Council asked for all proceedings in the service of the Society to be stopped until the results of his expedition be
95 Treasury, CB/2 530.
96 A. Maconochie,‘Brief note on Biscoe expedition, Dec 3rd 1834, draft of letter about Schomburgk expedition’, 1834–1839 RGS/CB2/325.
97 Hilhouse, CB/2.
98 Maconochie, CB/2.
99 Maconochie, op. cit. (note 94).
100 CM 13 June 1836.
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known.101It may be that Humboldt helped salvage Schomburgk’s reputation, as in February 1838 he praised Schomburgk and suggested that the RGS should cooperate with magnetical observations in high southern latitudes as part of the ‘magnetic crusade’ which has received much attention.102In March 1838, the RGS offered Schomburgk a further £100 if he would connect his work with that of Humboldt.103
CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE CREATION
Having made much of Alexander’s prospective expedition in the Journal in 1834, and having spent a great deal of money, something had to be said by 1836. In thefirst report of its kind, ‘At the General Meeting, May 16, 1836: Report from the Council’, a positive spin was produced.
‘The Delagoa Bay expedition has been entirely suspended due to the Caffre war and a year has been lost. This interval, however, it is not to be doubted that Captain Alexander has turned to account by gaining experience in African manners. He is probably at this moment leaving the Cape on his original errand better prepared than he could have been the previous year.’104 Tellingly, Doctor Smith’s expedition had a paper of 19 pages published.105 Alexander had produced three pages of his intended visit, ending with a note that on 10 September he had
‘left Cape Town that day on his journey to the Damaras—all well’.106
The following year the now regular feature of the Journal—‘At the Annual General Meeting, May 15, 1837: Report from the Council’—was obliged to report on the success of Smith’s venture. There was one paragraph for Alexander who had reached a missionary station on 1 January 1837 named ‘Warm Bath’.107 In this issue Alexander produced seven pages of
‘Latest Intelligence from Captain Alexander.’108 Despite having excellent instruments he referred to longitude only to a degree and related‘Strange tales of giants with feet as broad as elephants’. In another new initiative for the Journal, ‘A Sketch of the progress of geography;
and of the Labours of the Royal Geographical Society, during the Year 1836–7’ it was reported that Alexander was at‘latitude 28 S about 19 East at an Afrikaans Krall’.109
The RGS, however, could not control media outside its domain. A ‘lover of consistency’ wrote to the editor of the Cape Colony Advertiser on 7 March 1836 saying that Alexander’s reports were contradictory. ‘The poor man is not unlike wax.’
‘The Society which sent out this gallant captain may also see reason to change their opinion, and retract what they have written respecting our young traveller? (as) what he asserts, and reasserts this year, can be gravely and without a blush contradicted the next?’110 Probably more importantly for a London-centric organization, The Athenaeum commented perceptively that Alexander’s behaviour showed ‘how slight a
101 CM 27 February 1838.
102 CM 12 February 1838.
103 CM 12 March 1838.
104 ‘Report from the Council’, op. cit. (note 73).
105 A. Smith,‘Report of the expedition for exploring Central Africa’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 6, 394–413 (1836).
106 J. E. Alexander,‘Captain Alexander’s intended visit to the Dámaras, South Africa’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 6, 443–445 (1836).
107 ‘At the Annual General Meeting, 15 May 1837: Report from the Council’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 7, v–xiii (1837).
108 J. E. Alexander,‘Latest intelligence from Captain Alexander’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 7, 439–446 (1837).
109 ‘A sketch of the progress of geography; and of the labours of the Royal Geographical Society, during the year 1836–7’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 7, 172–195 (1837).
110 Cape Colony Advertiser, 7 March 1836. In J. E. Alexander,‘Extracts from South African newspapers’, JMS 2/9, 1836.
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Figure 5. Schomburgk’s map of the Berbice River. Source: R. H. Schomburgk, ‘Diary of an Ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana, in 1836–7’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 7, 302–350 (1837). (Online version in colour.)
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their traveller as to their reciprocal observations.’
Schomburgk’s many published papers during these years were not altered in any significant way from his manuscripts. His ‘Report of an Expedition into the Interior of British Guayana, in 1835–6’ was peppered with latitudes, longitudes and distances.112
‘Diary of an Ascent of the River Corentyn in British Guayana, in October, 1836’ followed in similar fashion.113 Then came ‘Diary of an Ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana, in 1836–7’ (figure 5).114 Schomburgk was actually so successful that he was appointed by the Colonial Office to survey the boundary between British Guyana and Brazil in 1840, and that year was awarded the Society’s Patron’s medal.115 After his governmental appointment, the RGS continued to supply Schomburgk with instruments, wanting to retain some control over his activities. It urged that he should connect his survey with that of the French to the East.116 By 1843 the RGS had to ask the Colonial Office for permission to publish Schomburgk’s papers.117
However, in the Journal of 1838, when these expeditions were summed up, the two travellers were discussed side by side. ‘In the course of Captain Alexander’s journey several new objects in natural history have been added to our collections—some account of the Damaras has been obtained—and the features of an extensive part of hitherto unexplored country has been traced on our maps. Schomburgk had explored the three rivers, Correntyne, Esquibo and Berbice in obtaining much topographical information, and for having very materially added to our knowledge of the natural productions of that rich and fertile country.’118 It appears that the two were valued equally in spite of the instrumental rhetoric within the Society.
CONCLUSION
The instructions provided by the Society to its travellers constituted an explicit statement that instruments should be used to produce numerical results up to a defined precision. The bestowing of instruments constituted an implied statement that the expedition was worthy of support. The instruments had a cost representing the embedded knowledge and skill that went into their production, and the relationships they relied on in terms of mathematical formulae derived for their use. The emphasis on this numerical approach proclaimed the Society’s role in promoting ‘scientific geography’, and the provision of instruments made this aim tangible. While maintaining an image of the heroic adventurer, the RGS never faltered in its belief in the morality of measurement during the nineteenth century.
However, this belief may be seen as largely rhetorical. Even without political setbacks, Alexander was incapable of undertaking the instrumental work that the RGS expected. His capabilities lay in the textual description of unfamiliar environments. The resource
111 Athenaeum, no. 570, 29 September 1838, p. 714.
112 R. Schomburgk,‘Report of an expedition into the interior of British Guayana, in 1835–6’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 6, 224–284 (1836).
113 R. Schomburgk,‘Diary of an ascent of the River Corentyn in British Guayana, in October, 1836’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 7, 285–301 (1837).
114 R. Schomburgk,‘Diary of an ascent of the River Berbice, in British Guayana, in 1836–7’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 7, 302–350 (1837).
115 CM 26 November 1838; CM 8 June 1840; Rivière, op. cit. (note 34), vol. 2, pp. xi and xii; CM 27 April 1840.
116 CM 8 June 1840; CM 9 November 1840.
117 CM 25 January 1841; CM 27 March 1843.
118 ‘At the Annual General Meeting, 21 May 1838: Report from the Council’, J. R. Geogr. Soc. 8, iii–xviii (1838).