United States or Venezuela ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A complete photographic survey of a few selected regions, as a basis for an equally thorough and exhaustive scrutiny by direct observation, would, it is believed, lead to a much more satisfactory and hopeful method for ultimately furnishing irrefragable testimony as to permanency or change than any that has yet been undertaken. WEST LONGITUDE 90 deg. TO 60 deg.
One of the most celebrated geographers among the ancients, flourished during the reign of Augustus; we allude to Strabo: his fundamental principles are, the globosity of the earth, and its centripetal force; he also lays down rules for constructing globes, but he seems ignorant of the mode of fixing the position of places by their latitude or longitude, or, at least, he neglects it.
At 10 in the evening of the 18th, being at no great distance from the island, we made the signal for the convoy to shorten sail, the distance not being sufficient to admit of our carrying sail all night; at nine the next morning we saw the island bearing north-west by north, distant four leagues: I make the latitude of the north end 16° 48' north, and its longitude, determined by the time-keeper, is 23° 03' west, the south end is in latitude 16° 39' north.
Deleah, who at that hour was usually walking sedately to school; saying over to herself her French poetry, perhaps, as she went, or taking a last peep in her geography book, to make sure once again of the latitude and longitude of Montreal, or to impress more firmly on her mind the imports and exports of Prussia.
Course and distance sail'd South 74 degrees West, 54 Miles; Longitude made from Cape West 5 degrees 55 minutes East. Tack'd and stood to the Eastward. Wednesday, 21st.
Wind South-East; course South-West by South; distance 62 miles; latitude 31 degrees 59 minutes South, longitude 162 degrees 44 minutes West. Sunday, 24th. Moderate breezes and Cloudy. At Noon saw some sea-Weed. The Southerly swell is now quite gone down.
Willis's Isle is an high rock of no great extent, near to which are some rocky islets. It is situated in the latitude of 54° S., longitude 38° 23' W. The other isle, which obtained the name of Bird Isle, on account of the vast number that were upon it, is not so high, but of greater extent, and is close to the N.E. point of the main land, which I called Cape North.
We bent new sails and made other necessary preparations for encountering the weather that was to be expected in a high latitude. Our latitude at noon was 29 degrees 38 minutes south, longitude 41 degrees 44 minutes west. Variation 7 degrees 13 minutes east.
It was left to PTOLEMY of Alexandria to sum up for the ancient world all the knowledge that had been accumulating from the time of Eratosthenes to his own day, which we may fix at about 150 A.D. He took all the information he could find in the writings of the preceding four hundred years, and reduced it all to one uniform scale; for it is to him that we owe the invention of the method and the names of latitude and longitude.
In order to get rid of these dangerous islands we stood south and west, and at length found ourselves in south latitude 65 degrees, longitude 60 degrees east. We were fortunate enough not to find any ice, although we were within fifteen hundred miles of the South Pole, and far within that impenetrable icy barrier which, in 1773, had arrested the progress of Captain Cook.
Word Of The Day