GREAT TRAVELLERS

Areas were selected according to various criteria, bearing witness to the eclectic nature of a group made up of people of such different cultures, ideologies, temperaments and vulnerabilities that sometimes entire hours were spent before agreements could be reached. At times it was latitude that became the object of infinitesimal corrections, at other times longitude provoked long-winded discussions making use of arguments taken from the narratives of great travellers, known to all, and also from illustrious unknown authors! Sometimes we even referred to the experiences of a forty-fifth cousin, a neighbour or a consultant whom we never hesitated to summon to be heard...In this type of research because of its very nature, it must be understood that geographical knowledge would not have sufficed without the concurrency of points of view relating to history, philosophy, metaphysics, science and art...
When agreement was finally reached we resorted to a scientific coding system to record the provisional final choice. In fact the system we used is the ancestor of the bar coding system that has been adopted in supermarkets for mass products. Thus it is that the document containing fundamental territorial particulars appears in the 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2- language form; these exact particulars are needed for the satisfactory execution of all commissioned tasks...