Sailing Down the Amazon River: La Condamine's Map

Abstract

This paper cartographically analyses the map of the Amazon River prepared by La Condamine (1744) and in particular its positional quality with the aid of modern digital cartography. For the region, the chart was the main basis for the Treaty of Madrid (1750), which served as a support for defining the borders in South America between Portugal and Spain. The map shows a band in the equatorial region, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, including the plateau in which the famous arc of meridian in Peru was measured and a detailed course of this big river, from Jaén Bracamoros to Belém do Pará. The La Condamine's main objective was to create the best and most accurate map of the Amazonas, and it was praised as such, but as shown in this paper, this praise should be tempered with some criticism. The analysis considers some cartographic and historical aspects, with emphasis on the analysis of the accuracy of geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude), examines the consequences of the error in longitude around 3°, at the mouth of the Napo River, which contaminated the entire map. The mistake was accepted as a fact and facilitated the adoption of the Treaty on the part of Spain.

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