While engaged in this work the celebrated academician and I often
conversed on the interest there would be in resuming in Spain the
measurement interrupted by the death of Méchain. We submitted our
project to Laplace, who received it with ardour, procured the necessary
funds, and the Government confided to us two this important mission.

M. Biot, I, and the Spanish commissary Rodriguez departed from Paris in
the commencement of 1806. We visited, on our way, the stations indicated
by Méchain; we made some important modifications in the projected
triangulation, and at once commenced operations.

An inaccurate direction given to the reflectors established at Iviza, on
the mountain Campvey, rendered the observations made on the continent
extremely difficult. The light of the signal of Campvey was very rarely
seen, and I was, during six months, in the _Desierto de las Palmas_,
without being able to see it, whilst at a later period the light
established at the Desierto, but well directed, was seen every evening
from Campvey. It will easily be imagined what must be the _ennui_
experienced by a young and active astronomer, confined to an elevated
peak, having for his walk only a space of twenty square metres, and for
diversion only the conversation of two Carthusians, whose convent was
situated at the foot of the mountain, and who came in secret,
infringing the rule of their order.

At the time when I write these lines, old and infirm, my legs scarcely
able to sustain me, my thoughts revert involuntarily to that epoch of my
life when, young and vigorous, I bore the greatest fatigues, and walked
day and night, in the mountainous countries which separate the kingdoms
of Valencia and Catalonia from the kingdom of Aragon, in order to
reëstablish our geodesic signals which the storms had overset.