Deák Antal András: A Duna fölfedezése
Tartalom - III.A DANUBIUS PANNONICO-MYSICUS, 1726
T II E DISCOVERY OF THE DANUBE VOLUME I: PEOPLES LIVING ALONG THE DANUBE AND THE GEOGRAPHIC AND HYDROGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT The luxuriousness of the book charms its readers from the very first. Those, who take the author's honest words to heart will make allowances for any errors in this pioneering work and bow their heads in respect to the huge spiritual enterprise. I was the first to shed light on this distant and secret world hidden in barbarian obscurity; so I think it can be excused that I did not explore everything and that not always perfectly - he relates in his foreword with a certain pride. By the distant and secret world he refered to territories which had been recently liberated from the Turks. His remark is especially valid with regard to the cartographic representation of the region. Marsigli's discovery should be understood in the strict sense of the word. The territory reaching from Vienna to the mouth of the Tisza had been, because of the Turkish presence, inaccessible to scientists. He had been able to move about freely in this territory as a member of the imperial army or with their protection. At the same time, he also visited even more remote, isolated parts of the Balkans, where he made his observations in stealth, since either in a boat or on foot or on horseback, he was always under surveillance by the barbarians. He then organized his collected knowledge and notes in winter camps or in tents, wrapped up in his military coat during intervals between fighting. Geographical, historical part The maps From his youth, Marsigli consistently drafted the territories that grabbed his attention. The idea to methodically map the Danube, however, was probably derived from the Royal Society through an Englishman called George Ashe, 24 9 secretary to the English ambassador in Vienna. Ashe described his journey along the Danube and his impressions of the cultural life there in a letter sent from Vienna 25 0 to E. Halley, the renowned astronomer 25 1. Ashe noted the inaccuracy of the maps, where the river and often also the settlements were indicated very incorrectly. He found Vienna to be an extremely unknowledgable place, where, despite the old and famous university, you cannot find a mathematician, he wrote, and should I unfold my telescope, I would be hauled off to the inquisitors for being a sorcerer. Then he continues: I searched in vain for some engineering officers in the army to persuade them (as you wished) to make maps of the freshly conquered territories, but there is no hope of finding one. A few months later he met Marsigli, the man who could provide him with acceptable information about the terra incognita held by the Turks. As an engineer general, Ashe went on, he often found an occasion to visit the recently liberated territories, which, according to him, are shamefully poorly represented on every modern map he has seen, and I have the reason to believe it on the basis of the little that I saw from Hungary last year, where (having checked on the best available maps) I often found that towns, villages, mountains and even entire rivers were ridiculously misplaced. 25 2 24 9 George Ash, member of the Royal Society and later also of the Philosophical Society of Dublin, was ambassador Lord Paget's secretary in Vienna. It was probably he who passed on the project of the Royal Society to Marsigli, in which they called for data from scholars and travellers on history, "natural history", geology, cartography and solar observations. Thus, he also collected materials for the Philosophical Transactions. 25 0 I got hold of the letter through the mediation of Anita McConnell from the Early Letter, Royal Society, London. 25 1 Edmund Halley (Haggerston, 1656 - London, 1742). In 1698 and 1699, he carried out geomagnetic surveys along the coasts of Africa and America and created the first map of geomagnetic declinations. He calculated the orbits of more than 20 comets and invented a method for determining lines of longitude based on observations of Venus as it passed in front of the Sun. In 1718, he discovered the inherent motion of stationary stars. 25 2 Ashe continues: This gentleman wishes to be admitted into the Royal Society, so if you think that he can earn it with his statements promised here and his future services, he would probably be greatly inspired in his future efforts upon hearing from you that he has been admitted. Please write to him either in I.atin or French or Italian and to my address. - On the meeting of the Royal Society on 25 November 1691, Marsigli was elected a member. 137
