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I carried myself a small barometer, a large knife and digger for plants, note-book, telescope, compass, and other instruments; whilst two or three Lepcha lads who accompanied me as satellites, carried a botanising box, thermometers, sextant and artificial horizon, measuring-tape, azimuth compass and stand, geological hammer, bottles and boxes for insects, sketch-book, etc., arranged in compartments of strong canvass bags.
A quantity of powder was divided between several bags; the compass, sextant, and spy-glass were put carefully out of the way of injury. On the 11th of October the sun no longer appeared above the horizon. They were obliged to keep a lighted lamp in the lodgings of the crew all the time. There was no time to lose; the explorations must be begun.
The introduction of the sextant greatly simplified taking reckonings at sea as well as facilitating taking the correct longitude of distant places. Before that time the mariner was obliged to depend upon his compass, a cross-staff, or an astrolabe, a table of the sun's declination and a correction for the altitude of the polestar, and very inadequate and incorrect charts.
A narrow, single bed, a plain washstand, a battered, painted bureau and a single chair these made up the list of furniture. Two pictures, both of schooners under full sail, hung on the walls. Beside them hung a ship's barometer, a sextant, and a clock that struck the "bells," instead of the hours as the landsman understands them.
All observations with the sextant were out of the question until we were once more some degrees from the zenith. 17th August. A harpoon was quickly procured, and one of the sailors sent out with it on the bowsprit; but whether he had bad luck, or was unskilled in the art of harpooning, he missed his mark.
Isaac Briggs, one of the surveyors-general of the United States, being about to return in July last to his station at Natchez, and apprised of the anxiety existing to have a practicable road explored for forwarding the mail to New Orleans without crossing the mountains, offered his services voluntarily to return by the route contemplated, taking as he should go such observations of longitude and latitude as would enable him to delineate it exactly, and by protraction to show of what shortenings it would admit, The offer was accepted and he was furnished with an accurate sextant for his observations.
The captain's cabin or what I took to be such had likewise been rifled, the charts having been taken from the racks, the chronometer from its padded well in the book-case, and the sextant had vanished, as well as the ship's papers.
In any instrument designed for use at low temperatures, care should be taken that parts which have to fit together are made of the same material. For determining the position in drifting pack-ice, the theodolite proved to be a more generally useful instrument than the sextant.
Navigators, then, at sea, always go out upon the deck at noon, if the sun is out, with a very curious and complicated instrument, called a sextant, in their hands; and with this instrument they measure exactly the distance from the sun at noon down to the southern horizon. This is called making an observation.
Two beasts of burden were sufficient to carry our provision, our instruments, and the paper necessary to dry our plants. One chest contained a sextant, a dipping-needle, an apparatus to determine the magnetic variation, a few thermometers, and Saussure's hygrometer.
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