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association with the likes of Condorcet and Lavoisier, is likely to fare worse. Which leaves us to meditate on a question: Which is worse—violent death at the hands of natives whose language and anger you do not understand, or violent death at the hands of fellow citizens whose language and anger you thought you shared?
    *   *   *
    Lamanon’s letter to his mother is brief and affectionate. He tells her that he is healthy, that he has friends, that his work is going well, that he thinks of her often, that he will write again from South America, that he will come home to her. He repeats that he and his shipmates are one big family, that Monsieur de Lap é rouse is like their father. She will like that. She has felt, since the death of her husband ten years earlier, that her younger child has lost his bearings. He has reverted to his boyhood ways, wandering about collecting things; only now he wanders so very far and for so very long. It will cheer her to know there is a father figure on board, someone whose responsibility it is to steer her son homeward.
    Lamanon decides to send her some of the white beans. “Have Jer ô me plant them against the south-facing wall in the potager,” he writes. “They are delicious. Think of me when you eat them.” He signs the letter “Robert,” opens the sack meant for the new mayor by way of the minister of marine, and counts out twenty beans. They make a dry, scattering sound as he drops them onto the paper.
    His letters complete, he makes his way back up on deck (going up not nearly as painful as coming down) and delivers them—and the beans—to the officer in charge. Then he goes to the rail and gazes south through his spyglass. He is looking for the Tropic of Cancer. Some of the seamen, put off by his airs and amused by his gullibility, have told him the tropic is visible from here. “Like a green line straight across the sea, sir,” they tell him. “It’s a sight a scientifical gentleman such as yourself ought not miss.” Lap é rouse witnesses this from the quarterdeck and is tempted to disabuse him of the notion. He does not like to see his chief naturalist made a fool of. But he is still resentful about Lamanon’s insolence over the excursion to the peak, so he leaves him be.
    We do not have that luxury, but we will allow a pause. A pause to regard a man at the point of greatest optimism about the future, before the forces of history overwhelm him. A man who feels himself to be the most fortunate of men. A man who is exactly where he wishes to be. How many of us can say that, even once in our lives? Lamanon looks out for the green line of the tropic and thinks about the countryside near his home in France. How verdant the rows of healthy bean vines! How marvelous the possibilities of science wed to humanity!

 
    THREE
    CONCEPCIÓN
    Concepción, Chile, February–March 1786
    How strange that the town was not there.
    Their maps, freshly minted by the Office of Charts, had guided them safely around the cape, past the eastern side of Quiriquine Island, and into Concepci ó n Bay. They should have been in plain sight of the town of Concepci ó n, a settlement more than two hundred years old, home to ten thousand people. A place they were counting on for fresh food, help with badly needed repairs, the company of other Europeans. They had consulted Fr é zier’s 1712 drawing of the view from the bay, in which one could make out the whole breadth of the town and the spires of eight churches. Where had it all gone?
    Lap é rouse lowered his glass. He took in the expanse of shoreline before him, looking for the fort, the cathedral bell tower, some sign of habitation, a wisp of smoke, anything. Five of his officers were doing the same—scanning the coastline with puzzled faces, raising and lowering their own telescopes. Lap é rouse handed his glass to his brother-in-law, Fr é d