Page - 211 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

211The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum clocks, undertake numerous geophysical observations, and so on—in short, “to describe the Brazilian lands” in all their diversity: I confess that, if merely one of these aspects are left out [of the expedi- tion’s research program], there will be no one in Europe who will explain that defect by pointing to the expedition’s mandate, the hardships en- dured, the wants of the instrumentation, the limited staff, or the [king’s] parsimony in the expenses: surely, every person will blame it on the igno- rance of Jesuits abusing the treasuries of kings.6 In other words, as Scherffer saw it, ensuring a broad expedition program was especially important when Jesuits were concerned in order to ward off attacks by anti-Jesuits. Returning to Hell’s own point of view, he assured the readers of the official Venus transit report, published in Copenhagen in February 1770, that “nor have we neglected the facts that throw light on or supplement the natural history of the animal and vegetable world, such as mussels, herbs, al- gae, mosses, and making other observations especially useful in regard of their economic applications” and the “origins, language, and different dialects of the Lappian nation living scattered in the north.” Thus, even if “as a result of ad- verse weather conditions […] I were to be disappointed in regard of the often mentioned observation, this scientific expedition were still not entirely fruit- less for the sciences and the useful arts.”7 While “Sámi studies” obviously ben- efited hugely from the expedition, whatever specimens of the mentioned items of the flora and fauna Hell and his associates might have collected and brought back with them from the journey, the sources contain virtually no information about their fate. It is thus a question of whether this remark is a genuine ac- count of their pursuits, or merely a gesture toward the practices and the topoi of exploration in the eighteenth century. In any case, it is important that the enlightened language of improvement was just as appropriate to frame his thoughts on the prospective yields of the northern expedition for the Viennese Jesuit as it had been for Linnaeus or Maupertuis. After spending eight and a half months in the treeless, Arctic scenery of Vardø, Hell and Sajnovics left the island on June 27, 1769. They took their time on the return journey. After sailing past the huge Varanger Peninsula, on the east side of which Vardø is situated, they allowed themselves a detour to the settlements of Talvik and Alta in the innermost part of a fjord, some sixty kilo- meters away from the direct sea route to Trondheim. Here, they enjoyed the 6 Scherffer to Weiss, dated [Graz], August 2, 1750, in Vargha, Correspondence de Weiss, 10–11, here 11. 7 Hell, Observatio transitus Veneris […] 1769, 4.