George Karl (Charles)
Ludwig Preuss: Forenote: "By Gad, sir, you are a
character."
Casper
Gutman to Sam Spade, Maltese Falcon,
1929. Charles Preuss was a
character. And he knew it:
After 3 years of adventuring, Preuss did not accompany the 3rd Expedition. In Washington, making preparations for his 3rd Expedition, Frémont recorded that: To Mr Preuss had been assigned the congenial labor of making up the maps [from 1843-44]. He was now owner of a comfortable home of his own; a good house near the Arsenal, which the locality brought within his means. The large front room he converted into his working-room, where he had space and a good light, and there was a lookout over the river, and a long bit of grassed ground where Preuss made an arbor and where he smoked his pipe as he watched his child playing and the cow grazing. "There was a mass of astronomical and other observations to be calculated and discussed before a beginning on [a map] could be made. Indeed, the making of such a map is an interesting process. It must be exact. First, the foundations must be laid in observations made in the field; then the [mathematical] reductions of these observations to latitude and longitude; afterward the projection of the map, and the laying down of positions fixed by the observation; then the tracings from the sketch-books of the lines of the rivers, the forms of the lakes, the contours of the hills. Specially, it is interesting to those who have laid in the field these foundations, to see them all brought into final shape--fixing on a small sheet the results of laborious travel over waste regions, and giving to them an enduring place on the world's surface." Frémont
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Born
in Höhscheid in 1803. After studying the science of
geodesy, he became a surveyor for the Prussian government.
After moving to the United States in 1834 with his wife and
children, he worked for the Coast Survey under Ferdinand
Hassler. In 1838, when funds for the survey were curtailed,
Preuss found himself out of a job and unable to feed
his family.
Preuss
was an important member of Frémont's expeditions of
1842, 1843-44, and 1848. He kept a daily map of the route
which was used later to produce the details of the
maps--filling in between Frémont's astronomically
determined positions. A fine artist, Preuss also made the
drawings from which the illustrative plates were engraved
that accompanied the published reports, and he produced the
maps of 1843, 1845, and 1848. The most western portion of
the 1848 map is shown below. The Frémont/Preuss maps
of the period 1843 to 1848 were the basis for all western
maps of the following two decades.
