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Updated: June 6, 2025
The skipper likewise secured the ship's papers and removed the compass from the binnacle; while I, of course, did not forget my sextant and a chart or two which Captain Billings told me to take. The foremast hands having also selected a small stock of useful articles, all of us were ready to leave the vessel as soon as she gave us notice to quit.
Brass parallactic rules, which revolved in azimuth above a brass horizon, twelve feet in diameter. A half sextant, of four cubits radius. A steel sextant. Another half sextant, with steel limb, four cubits radius. The parallactic rules of Copernicus. Equatorial armillaries. A quadrant of a solid plate of brass, five cubits in radius, shewing every ten seconds.
Cortlandt took a repeating shot-gun with No. 4 shot, and, having also some hunting-knives and a sextant, all three set out in a northwesterly direction. The ground was rather soft, and a warm vapor seemed to rise from it. To the east the sky was veiled by dense clouds of smoke from the towering volcanoes, while on their left the forest seemed to extend without limit.
The great difficulty of making observations at sea, except with a sextant and such, it must be remembered, are of a very rough nature compared with those made on shore is want of steadiness. The sea is never quiet, and no machine has as yet been invented to counteract the movement of a ship, and obtain a perfect level.
The following articles have been left in the tent: 3 half bags of reindeer containing a miscellaneous assortment of mits and sleeping socks, very various in description, a sextant, a Norwegian artificial horizon and a hypsometer without boiling-point thermometers, a sextant and hypsometer of English make. Left a note to say I had visited the tent with companions.
Where the five hundred guns came from, it was easy to divine; for, knowing that I used a sextant, my connection with government was a thing of course; and, as I must know all her majesty's counsels, I was questioned on the subject of the indistinct rumors which had reached them of Lord Rosse's telescope.
Mtarika came at last; a big ugly man, with large mouth and receding forehead. He asked to see all our curiosities, as the watch, revolver, breech-loading rifle, sextant. I gave him a lecture on the evil of selling his people, and he wished me to tell all the other chiefs the same thing.
George and I said no more. The question was settled. Hubbard was the leader. Immediately after luncheon we set to work preparing for the march overland. In addition to several minor articles of equipment, we decided to leave behind us the artificial horizon, the sextant box, and one of the axes. When our light packs had been prepared, we turned the canoe bottom up on the river bank.
For a hundred yards below, the current was covered with floating books and boxes, bales and blankets, and scattered articles of clothing; and so strong and boiling was the stream, that even our heavy instruments, which were all in cases, kept on the surface, and the sextant, circle, and the long, black box of the telescope, were in view at once. For a moment, I felt somewhat disheartened.
"Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine clothes?" "That's Captain L , the owner of the ship he's one of the main bosses." In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the pilot-house and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they "take the sun" through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel through it.
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