THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 61 



$15,000 granted by the Cape Parliament. They set sail on an 

 English steamer for Zanzibar, and upon nearing that place they 

 encountered a Spanish slaver which was just leaving the African 

 coast with 544 starving slaves penned up in the deadly atmos- 

 phere of the ship's hold, where the dead and dying were lying in 

 ghastly confusion. The slaver was captured and the miserable 

 black wretches returned to their native shores. Directly after 

 this event Speke and his companion arrived at Zanzibar, Avhere 

 preparations were made, and on October 2d, with two hundred 

 men, they departed for the interior of Africa. Capt. Speke thus 

 describes the manner of taking observations and making up the 

 records of his journey : 



" My first occupation was to map the country. This is done 

 by timing the rate of march with a watch, taking compass-bear- 

 ings along the road or on any conspicuous marks as, for 

 instance, hills off it and by noting the watershed in short, all 

 topographical objects. On arrival in camp every day came the 

 ascertaining, by boiling a thermometer, of the altitude of the 

 station above the sea-level ; of the latitude of the station by the 

 meridian altitude of a star taken with a sextant ; and of the com- 

 pass variation by azimuth. Occasionally there was the fixing of 

 certain crucial stations, at intervals of sixty miles or so, by lunar 

 observations, or distances of the moon either from the sun or 

 from certain given stars, for determining the longitude, by 

 which the original-timed course can be drawn out with certainty 

 on the map by proportion. Should a date be lost, you can 

 always discover it by taking a lunar distance and comparing 

 il with the Nautical Almanac, by noting the time when a star 

 passes the meridian if your watch is right, or by observing 

 the phases of the moon, or her rising or setting, as compared 

 with the Nautical Almanac. The rest of my work, besides 

 sketching and keeping a diary, which was the most troublesome 

 of all, consisted in making geological and zoological collections. 

 With Captain Grant rested the botanical collections and ther- 

 mometrical registers. He also boiled one of the thermometers, 

 kept the rain-guage. and undertook the photography ; but after 



