Ill
AND
GEOGRAPHICAL OBSERVATIONS.
T he Map which accompanies this Work, differs in so many particulars from
those which have hitherto been published of the Southern point of Africa,
that it becomes necessary to show from what materials it has been constructed,
and on what grounds the alterations have been made: especially
as these alterations extend to districts which I have not personally visited.
It must, in the first place, be stated that my own track is laid down
entirely and solely from my own observations, made during the journey.
These observations consist of the daily distances travelled; the courses from
station to station ; the bearings and trigonometrical intersections of distant
and remarkable mountains ; the bearings of various places remote from the
track, and their distance, according to the concurrent information of the
native inhabitants j very frequent astronomical observations for the latitude;
and many sets of lunar distances for the longitude. These, whenever my
time permitted, were laid down during the journey, from day to day, on a
large scale j and various details added from ocular observation.
After my return to England, I carefully protracted, by a scale of nine
inches to one degree of latitude, these observations, independently of my
longitudes} and had the satisfaction of finding, notwithstanding the immense
distance, that the great triangle formed by Cape Town, Klaarwater,
and the mouth of the Great Fish River, guided only by the bearings, distances,
and latitudes, closed to within forty miles.
This, I again laid down for the third time, on the same scale; distributing
the deficiency of the forty miles equally over the whole triangle.
The original map thus formed, measures seven feet and a half by eight and
a half} and from this the present map has been reduced and engraved.
Having superintended this, as well as every other part of this work mysellj