M&D - Chapter 11 - pp 107-108

Sat Feb 21 11:04:37 CST 2015

Following my own unique 2 pages a day we’re up to Chapter 11, pages 107-108 -  sorry if it’s over-kill - my editing skills are close to nil. 
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Page 107:   
** Maskelyne is on St. Helena to observe Sirius in the constellation of Canis Major (the Great Dog).   Mason & Dixon were going to Bencoolen for the “inconstant” star of Mira in the constellation of (Cetus) the Whale.   The star Gamma is in the constellation Draco (Dragon)  at Greenwich for Englishmen.

"Ev’ry Midnight the baleful thing is there, crossing directly overhead, - the Yellow Dog.  There inverted among the Wires, all but flowing.”   Yeah?  

"Wires, all but flowing” ???  Sounds a bit paranoid to me.  What are these wires -  the ship’s wires?  imaginary lines between points in a constellation? the lines used by astronomers? 

*** "A very small town clings to the edge of an interior that must be reckoned part of the 'Other World.'”  (? Other World?  Aliens?  Celestial? Etc?)  

“No change here is gradual…”  
A Pynchon motif....rapid change is not good, not natural. And, next line, distances should not be vast....life 'goes for nought”   (more later in book) 

“… the sea appears to lie <i> above the Island, <i - in book> -  as if suspended, and kept from falling fatally upon it, thro’ the operations of Mysterion impenetrable on the part of a Guardian . . . . As if in Payments credited against the Deluge, upon no sure Basis of Prediction, the great Sea-Rollers will rise, and come against the Island, - reaching higher than the Town with the Jacobite name, tho’ perhaps not quite to the ridgeline above it.”  

This is getting somewhat spooky - 

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Page  108 - 

"a Company of Giant rob'd Beings, risen incalculably far away over the horizon"
These robed figures at the edge of the world can be found in Gravity's Rainbow, on page 217, after Slothrop gets Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck drunk: But out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are these visitors standing...these robed figures
http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_11:_105-115

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"Out upon Munden’s Point stand a pair of Gallows, simplified to Pen-strokes in the glare of this Ocean sky.  A Visitor may lounge in the Evening upon the Platform behind the Lines, and, as a Visitor to London might gaze at St . Paul’s, regard these more sinister forms in the failing North Light,— perhaps led to mediate upon Punishment,- or upon Commerce …for Commerce without Slavery is unthinkable,  whilst Slavery must ever include, as an essential Term, the gallows, - Slavery without the Gallows being as hollow and Waste a Proceeding, as a Crusade without the Cross.”    ****  
(SEE next post for a wee bit of parsing or careful reading  which is what that paragraph needs more than annotating!) 

Fwiw,  I can find no verification of any gallows at St. Helena.  This is a good site about slavery there,  but no mention of gallows although gallows are very common in history and there were hangings in St. Helena. 
http://sainthelenaisland.info/slaves.htm

Actually, the slaves in St. Helena were treated relatively well according to that site. However - 
"In 1679 rumours of an impending uprising by slaves led to the gruesome execution of three slaves and cruel punishment of many others - ghost stories still told on the island relate to these executions.”

Can’t find further evidence of that incident,  but there are hangings mentioned in a book (1905)  by E.L. Jackson online at
http://www.archive.org/stream/sthelenahistoric00jackrich/sthelenahistoric00jackrich_djvu.txt

Munden Point is a place of interest on St. Helena -  an old British fort was there - photo:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidstanleytravel/16511162565/

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Slavery at St. Helena: 
"A census in 1723 recorded 1,110 people, including 610 slaves."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena

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Visitors, especially women,  to St. Helena other than slaves - almost listed and compared to “Birds of Passage”:  
Convicts
Young Wives, 
Company Perpetuals  
(such shuttles upon the loom of Trade as Mrs. Rollright - ah - what an apparently appropriate name) 
Mrs. Rollright - aka Florinda - 

Another narrator back-up to Mason and Florida at the hangings he attended following Rebekah’s death. 

"Wapping was also the site of 'Execution Dock', where pirates and other water-borne criminals faced execution by hanging from a gibbet constructed close to the low water mark. Their bodies would be left dangling until they had been submerged three times by the tide.[2]”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping

Lower-situated imitations of the Hellfire Club”  
Hell-Fire Club -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Club  (of the times in England) 

Hangings on Tyburn - here we have the gallows - ended 1783 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyburn#Tyburn_gallows

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l