| Reference number | MS/257/1/147 |
| Alternative reference number | Sa.147 |
| Previous numbers | ES1/22/147 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Letter from Pieter Adrian Bergsma, Batavia [Jakarta, Indonesia] to Edward Sabine |
| Date | 14 May 1864 |
| Description | Bergsma discusses his journey, the challenges he has experienced in India trying to set up his instruments and a temporary observatory, the delay in beginning his observations, and the attitudes to his work.
The government sent Bergsma to India on an overcrowded vessel on which to was impossible to take any observations. Bergsma discusses the discouraging welcome he received by the Governor General. For a year Bergsma was living in a hotel, and his instruments were kept in a stone house packed in boxes, without any assistance. After a year and as a consequence of a letter from the ‘home government’ the colonial government provided a house in which Bergsma could unpack his instruments and be used as a temporary observatory. Another year passed before the government granted money to execute Bergsma’s plans. After two years Bergsma is now at stage to put up his instruments and hopes to start his observations in the next three or four months. Only a part of Bergsma’s instruments can be put up. Bergsma notes the delays in beginning his work, and mention ‘all is done slowly in this country. The sentence time is money is unknown here’. Bergsma intends to use ‘natives’ as assistants as he sites it would be too expensive to have ‘Europeans’, but in his opinion ‘the natives will do very well’. |
| Extent | 5p |
| Format | Manuscript |
| Physical description | Ink on paper |
| Access status | Open |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | Name | Dates |
| NA8279 | Sabine; Sir; Edward (1788 - 1883) | 1788 - 1883 |