160 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



This obfervation furely therefore is not worth record- 

 ing, unlefs to mew the infufficiency or imperfection of the 

 method ; it cannot deferve the encomiums * that have been 

 beftowed upon it, if juftice has been done to Eratolthenes* 

 geodefique meafures, which I do not, by any manner of 

 means, warrant to be the cafe, becaufe the meafure of 

 his arch of the meridian feems to have been conducted 

 with a much greater degree of fuccefs and prechion than 

 that of his bafe. 



On the 2 2d, 23d, and 24th of January, being at Syene, in a 

 houfe immediately eaft of the fmall ifland in the Nile (where 

 the temple of Cnuphis is Hill ftanding, very little injured, and 

 which j- Strabo, who was himfelf there, fays was in the an- 

 cient town, and near the well built for the obfervation of 

 the folftice) with a three-foot brafs quadrant, made by Lang- 

 lois, and defcribed by J Monfieur de la Lande, by a mean of 

 three obfervations of the fun in the meridian, I concluded 

 the latitude of Syene to be 24 o' 45" north. 



And, as the latitude of Alexandria, by a medium of many 

 obfervations made by the French academicians, and more 

 recently by Mr Niebuhr and myfelf, is beyond pollibility 

 of contradiction 31 1 1 7 33 7/ , the arch of the meridian con- 

 tained between Syene and Alexandria, mult be 7 io 7 48", or 

 1 [ i2 7/ lefs than Eratofthenes made it. And this is a wonder- 

 ful precifion, if we confider the imperfection of his inftru- 

 ment, in the probable fhortnefs of his radius, and difficulty 



(almofl 



. *— — r 1 ' n 1 1 1 1 <i, 



* Speftacle de la Nature. 

 f Strabo, lib. 1 7. p. 944. ^ L'hiftoire d'aftronomie, de M. de la Lande, vol. i. lib. 2, 



