The French scientist encountered all sorts of difficulties of which he complains bitterly in his correspondence. "Hell," he writes, perhaps with some exaggeration—"hell and all the scourges it vomits upon the earth, tempests, war, the plague and black intrigues are therefore unchained against me!"
The fact is that he encountered among his collaborators more of proud obstinacy than of good will and that a thousand accidents retarded his work. The plague was nothing, the fear of the plague was much more redoubtable; all these isles were on their guard against the neighboring isles and feared lest they should receive the scourge from them. Méchain obtained permission to disembark only after long weeks upon the condition of covering all his papers with vinegar; this was the antisepsis of that time.
Disgusted and sick, he had just asked to be recalled, when he died.
Arago and Biot it was who had the honor of taking up the unfinished work and carrying it on to completion.
Thanks to the support of the Spanish government, to the protection of several bishops and, above all, to that of a famous brigand chief, the operations went rapidly forward. They were successfully completed, and Biot had returned to France when the storm burst.
It was the moment when all Spain took up arms to defend her independence against France. Why did this stranger climb the mountains to make signals? It was evidently to call the French army. Arago was able to escape the populace only by becoming a prisoner. In his prison, his only distraction was reading in the Spanish papers the account of his own execution. The papers of that time sometimes gave out news prematurely. He had at least the consolation of learning that he died with courage and like a Christian.
Even the prison was no longer safe; he had to escape and reach Algiers. There, he embarked for Marseilles on an Algerian vessel. This ship was captured by a Spanish corsair, and behold Arago carried back to Spain and dragged from dungeon to dungeon, in the midst of vermin and in the most shocking wretchedness.
If it had only been a question of his subjects and his guests, the dey would have said nothing. But there were on board two lions, a present from the African sovereign to Napoleon. The dey threatened war.
The vessel and the prisoners were released. The port should have been properly reached, since they had on board an astronomer; but the astronomer was seasick, and the Algerian seamen, who wished to make Marseilles, came out at Bougie. Thence Arago went to Algiers, traversing Kabylia on foot in the midst of a thousand perils. He was long detained in Africa and threatened with the convict prison. Finally he was able to get back to France; his observations, which he had preserved and safeguarded under his shirt, and, what is still more remarkable, his instruments had traversed unhurt these terrible adventures. Up to this point, not only did France hold the foremost place, but she occupied the stage almost alone.
In the years which follow, she has not been inactive and our staff-office map is a model. However, the new methods of observation and calculation have come to us above all from Germany and England. It is only in the last forty years that France has regained her rank. She owes it to a scientific officer, General Perrier, who has successfully executed an enterprise truly audacious, the junction of Spain and Africa. Stations were installed on four peaks upon the two sides of the Mediterranean. For long months they awaited a calm and limpid atmosphere. At last was seen the little thread of light which had traversed 300 kilometers over the sea. The undertaking had succeeded.