Aidez-moi, s'il vous plaît? (Need french to english translation if possible)

[Gidde]

Hi to our francophone members,

I'm working on a new map in which I'm trying to emulate the style of Nicholas de Fer --- so obviously my reference map is in French. I can handle most of it with my rusty skills in the language, but I'm trying to scale the map the same as my new map is scaled, and for the life of me I can't figure out what this word is in the scale bar. My best guess is lieues, which I believe would be leagues, but I'm not sure if that's correct in context. Help, please?

[moutarde]

Well it says Ladies of course! I'm not able to figure it out, what sort of a map is it? Big whole world, small little province?

[Gidde]

It's a map of an island, the first map on this page: http://cartes-martinique.pagesperso-...fr/p18m_fr.htm

[moutarde]

Considering the date of the map, it's almost certainly referring to leagues. My best guess is that it's two abbreviations, something like Lac.Lies. Where the lies would be an abbrev for lieues, and the Lac would be abbreviation for what kind of lieues they are. Lieues could vary in length according to what city or province you were in. France didn't go decimal until around 1800. Hopefully that helps...

I could be completely wrong of course, 18th century french isn't my strong point

[Gidde]

That certainly helps, thanks!

[Pyer]

as far as I can tell, it's Lieües with the dot on the fist i missing. as moutarde told you the lieue may vary in length. here is a Wikipedia article on lieue in France in the old times.