double stars, which he described in the Memoirs of the Astronomical
Society. His observations were made with an excellent Newtonian
telescope, twenty feet in focal length, and eighteen and a half inches
in aperture; and having obtained, to use his own expression, "a
sufficient mastery over the instrument," the idea occurred to him of
making it available for a survey of the southern heavens. Accordingly,
he left England on the 13th of November 1833, and arrived at Cape Town
on the 16th of January 1834. Five days later he wrote to his aunt as
follows:--


"Here we are safely lauded and comfortably housed at the far
end of Africa; and having secured the landing and final storage
of all the telescopes and other matters, as far as I can see,
without the slightest injury, I lose no time in reporting to
you our good success _so far_. M----[1] and the children are,
thank God, quite well; though, for fear you should think her
too good a sailor, I ought to add that she continued sea-sick,
at intervals, during the whole passage. We were nine weeks and
two days at sea, during which period we experienced only one
day of contrary wind. We had a brisk breeze 'right aft' all the
way from the Bay of Biscay (which we never entered) to the
'calm latitudes;' that is to say, to the space about five or
six degrees broad near the equator, where the trade-winds
cease, and where it is no unusual thing for a ship to lie
becalmed for a month or six weeks, frying under a vertical sun.
Such, however, was not our fate. We were detained only three or
four days by the calms usual in that zone, but never _quite_
still, or driven out of our course; and immediately on crossing
'the line' got a good breeze (the south-east trade-wind), which