12 



work, place the mission in latitude 1° 30'. 

 Abbe" Gili gives it 3° 50'. I found* by meri- 

 dian altitudes of Canopus, and x of the Southern 

 Cross, 5 C 38' 4" for the latitude ; and by the time 

 keeper 4 h 4V 17" of longitude west of the meri- 

 dian of Paris. The dip of the magnetic needle 

 was on the 16th of April 32*25° (centesimal 

 division). The intensity of the magnetic force 

 was expressed by two hundred and twenty-three 

 oscillations in 10' of time, when it was at Paris 

 by two hundred and forty-five oscillations. 



We found this small mission in the most de- 

 plorable state. It contained even at the time 

 of the expedition of Solano, commonly called 

 the expedition of the boundaries, three hundred 

 and twenty Indians. This number had diminish- 

 ed, at our passage by the Cataracts, to forty- 

 seven ; and the missionary assured us, that this 



* Ohs. Astr. vol. 1, p. 226. I took my observations near 

 the small church of the mission. Don Jose Solano, the cos- 

 mographer of the expedition of the boundaries, had found 

 (no doubt with quadrants not rectified by inverting the instru- 

 ment, and without observing stars on the north and south) 

 5° 35' (Caulin, p. 71). Father Gili (vol. 1, p. xxxii) thinks, 

 that the commissioners of the boundaries stopped at 4° 18' 22". 

 As he places Cabruta (the latitude of which place, inferred 

 from that of the Capuchino, appears to me to be 7° 40') in 

 5°, we cannot suppose, that he meant to write 5° 18 1 instead 

 of 4° 18'. Did he not rather deduce Cabruta from the erro- 

 neous position of Atures ? 



