alay population, but causing some disagreeable
results to travelers. Our line of ships did not terminate their
voyage at the Cape, but proceeded thence to other African ports east
of the Cape. Here a rigid quarantine had been established, and it
was necessary that the ships touching at the Cape of Good Hope should
have had no communication with the shore. Thus it happened that we
found, lying in the harbor, the ship of our line which had preceded
us, waiting to get supplies from us, in order that it might proceed
on its voyage. Looking at a row-boat after we had cast anchor, we
were delighted to see two faces which I well knew: those of David
Gill, astronomer of the Cape Observatory, and Dr. W. L. Elkin, now
director of the Yale Observatory. The latter had gone to the Cape as
a volunteer observer with Gill, their work being directed mostly to
parallaxes of stars too far south to be well observed in our latitude.
Our friends were not, however, even allowed to approach the ship,
for fear of the smallpox, the idea appearing to be that the latter
might be communicated by a sort of electric conduction, if the boat
and the ship were allowed to come into contact, so we had to be put
ashore without their aid.

We selected as our station the little town of Wellington, some forty
miles northeast of Cape Town. The weather chances were excellent
anywhere, but here they were even better than at the Cape. The most
interesting feature of the place was what we might call an American
young ladies' school. The Dutch inhabitants of South Africa are
imbued with admiration of our institutions, and one of their dreams
is said to be a United States of South Africa modeled after our
own republic. Desiring to give their daughters the best education
possible, they secured the services of Miss Ferguson, a well-known
New England teacher, to found a school on the American model.
We established our station in the grounds of this school.

The sky on the day of the transit was simply perfect. Notwithstanding
the intensity of the sun's rays, the atmosphere was so steady that I
have never seen the sun to better advantage. So all our observations
were successful.

On our departure we left two iron pillars, on which our apparatus for
photographing the sun was mounted, firmly imbedded in the ground, as
we had used them. Whether they will remain there until the transit
of 2004, I do not know, but cannot help entertaining a sentimental
wish t