332 GREAT HEAT.— SUN'S ALTITUDE. — SEXTANT. 20,21 Sept. 
eyes, equally desirable. When, in a good-natured way, I had with- 
stood almost all their importunities, they left me, and took their 
seat round the fire, with my men ; having noticed that preparations 
were going forward there, for killing a sheep. As they had no busi- 
ness of their own to attend to, they stuck close to us, till the evening, 
when the sheep was killed ; an,d having voluntarily assisted in flaying 
it, and broiling the meat, they sat feasting till a late hour, when 
they left us, and returned to their kraal. 
2ist. Gert, who had undertaken the oflice of candle-maker, be- 
gan now to complain greatly against the heat of the weather, the 
candles made some time ago being all softened into one inseparable 
mass. He had been patiently labouring all the morning in pouring 
melted tallow, in the usual mode, over the wicks, without having 
succeeded in making a single candle ; and at last, finding that the 
fat could not by any contrivance be made to congeal, he was com- 
pelled to relinquish his job till a cooler day. 
The warmth of the weather continued as great as it had been on 
the preceding day ; which might in some degree be occasioned by 
the nature of our station ; where the dry rocky mountains, heated 
by the sun, increased the temperature of the air enclosed in these 
narrow valleys, to a degree of heat and dryness which may, without 
being meant very hyperbolically, be compared to that of an oven. 
The sun having now risen in midday altitude, above two 
thirds of its approach to the zenith, was made use of this day, for 
the last time, to determine the latitude ; which I computed to be 
29". 15'. S2". * As the angle of altitude made by any object is 
doubled by the angle of reflection from an artificial horizon, the 
traveller provided with no other instrument than a sextant, is pre- 
cluded from the use of all those celestial bodies which have more 
than sixty degrees of elevation. On this account, he cannot have 
the convenience of observing his latitude in the day time, so long 
as the altitude of the sun may continue above that number of de- 
* At the Kloof Village, 21st of September, the observed meridional altitude of the 
Sun's upper limb was 60'. 1 . 19". 
