about 5500 feet. I used a pocket sextant of Carey’s, which reads
only to two minutes. I was disappointed in repeating my barometrical
measurement of Ariero, having rode a kicking mule
there, and the small end of the tube being broken in consequence.
I am sure, however, it must be quite as high as I made it before,
5446 feet. The Ice-house Peak must also be within 100 feet as
high. It subtends an angle of 10°. 41'. 45“ from a room about
150 feet above the sea, in Mr. Keir’s house at Funchal, from which
it bears N. 11°. W. Ariero bears about N. 13°. W., from the
ice-house peak, and the horizontal distance between the two is
only 4240 feet. ~-
My companion to Ariero, Mr. Dunn, having formed a walking
party with two other residents to Pico Ruivo, I put a new^tube
to my barometer, boiling the mercury both in the small glass
retort and in the tube, according to the lessons old Fortin gave
me, and finding it accord with its former elevations at the different
hours of the day in the same room, and under the same meteorological
circumstances, I confided it to the above-mentioned
gentleman, with the necessary instructions, and he made an
observation on Ruivo, which, with the accompanying one at
Funchal with a barometer recommended me by Baron de Humboldt,
gave 61.18 for its height, or 46 feet less than mine. Using
the crystal horizon, spirit level, and proof telescope on the Pico
Ruivo, the thread of the latter cuts the heavens in every direction,
without the intervention* of any other peak, and the Torrinhas,
bearing east, which Von Buch maj?e 5857 feet by barometrical
measurement, is only 3772 feet distant horizontally from Ruivo.
I have every reason therefore to feel some confidence in my
barometrical measurement of the latter,' the heights ascribed to
which have varied strangely, and are as follows:
Gourlayz . . . . 8250
Encyclopedia* . 5068J
Smithb . . . . 5162
Sabinec . . . . . 5438
Bowdieh . . . . 6164'
I am told that Lieutenant Vidal, of the Leven surveying ship,
made it either 5964 or 5946 feet above the Consul’s garden, which
would make it more than 6000 feet above the sea, and that Mr.
Johnstone, who published the map of Madeira, made it about 6000
also: Dr. Heberden merely says, that it is 3170 feet above the
plain which environs its base*. The highest point of Madeira is
so rarely seen by vessels at sea, that those not touching at the
island could seldom avail themselves of the exact knowledge of its
height for the correction of their longitude; and a more serious
error to them, in frequently making but the east or west point of
the island, is the erroneous length which has been ascribed to it.
In the 7th, and I presume the last edition of Guthrie’s geography,
* Observations on the Natural History, Climate, and Diseases of Madeira, London,
1811, p. 6. The Doctor's knowledge of Natural History, whieh has not enabled him
to determine a single rock, mineral, bird, fish, or plant, in this then wholly unexamined
island, is confined to such remarks as “ mutton is not so much cultivated
here as it ought,” p. 24, and the like. The Doctor, however, has given a very patient
and useful meteorological register (continued for eighteen years), which his editor
ought not to have taken the liberty to crop short. Dr. Pitta {Account of the Island
of Madeira, London, 1812), who, for so amiable a man, dwells rather iH-naturedly I
think on Dr. Gourlay’s, or rather Dr. Gourlay’s printer’s inadvertence, “ I prescribed
for a raw lizard every morning,” tells ns p. 78, “ of shell fish, the lobster, crab
periwinkle, shrimp, and lamprey, abound here,” hut then to be sure he does not
promise Natural History in his title page.,
* I have omitted to note, hut I am pretty sure it was the Encyc. Londinensis, from
which I extracted this height before I left Europe.
b T o u t of the Continent, vol. 1, p. 20Q. Irish Transactions, vol. 8, pi 124.
c An Account of a Barometrical Measurement of the Height of the Pico Ruivo, by
C a p t a i n S a b i n e . Journal o f Science, No. 29.
1 H u m b o l d t ’s Voyage, fyc. 1. 1, c. 1. C o o k ’s First Voyage, t. 1, pU. 2272.