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Updated: June 6, 2025
We directed Drewyer and Field's to assend the river tomorrow and join Gibson & party, and hunt untill our arrival. this evening being fair observed time and distance of moon's Eastern Limb from regulus with Sextant * West This morning was so cloudy that I could not obtain any lunar observations with a Aquila as I wished.
We immediately took in studding-sails and hauled our wind, running in for the land. This was done to determine our longitude; for by the captain's chronometer we were in 25º W., but by his observations we were much farther, and he had been for some time in doubt whether it was his chronometer or his sextant which was out of order.
Each set consisted of the following instruments. A six-inch sextant. The hypsometrical apparatus, a device used for measuring heights by means of boiling-point thermometers, which had been specially constructed for work at great elevations. It is well known that the higher one goes, the lower is the temperature at which water boils.
The iron camp-bed was next inspected, and admired; then the sextant, which was coveted and begged for, but without success, much to the astonishment of the king, as his attendants had led him to expect he would get anything he asked for. Then the thermometers were wanted and refused; also table-knives, spoons, forks, and even cooking-pots, for we had no others, and could not part with them.
My excellent watch, owing to the short duration of my movements, was also on these occasions an admirable chronometer. I wanted, besides, a sextant, a few philosophical instruments, and some books. To purchase these things, I made several unwilling journeys to London and Paris, choosing a time when I could be hid by the favoring clouds.
Cunningham and three men carrying my theodolite, sextant, and barometer, I ascended a summit at the southern extremity of Harvey's range, and which I had observed particularly from Mount Juson as being the most eligible point to form, in connection with that range, a base for extending the survey westward.
Having thus imparted my intentions I ordered them to throw away every superfluous article; and a very valuable sextant, which had hitherto been carried turn about by Corporals Auger and Coles, was here abandoned.
Ateeko seemed to fancy that the sextant was gold, in which Clapperton soon undeceived him; and selecting it, with the parchment and one or two flannel waistcoats and towels, likely to be useful to Major Denham, he offered the prince five thousand kowries, at which he appeared much surprised and mortified. El Wordee whispered into Clapperton's ear, "Remember he is a prince, and not a merchant."
He said this without pausing, as he went to his berth and brought out a sextant, with which he returned on deck. Standing near the foot of the companion-ladder, Watty Wilkins had heard the words, "There is no hope," and the few sentences addressed to the child. His impressionable spirit leapt to the conclusion that the fate of all on board was sealed.
The most interesting part of the survey work was what is known to the surveyor as coast-lining. This meant walking along the edge of the sea ice, fixing one's position by sextant angle every five hundred yards or so, and sketching in a notebook the character and features of the ever changing coast between the various "fixes."
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