Noah protested that your old seaman, especially if a sealer and a Stunin'tunner, had no occasion for such geometry operations, as he termed them; that it might be well enough, perhaps necessary, for your counting-house, silk-gloved captains, who run between New York and Liverpool, to be rubbing up their glasses and polishing their sextants, for they hardly ever knew where they were, except at such times; but as for himself, he had little need of turning star-gazer at his time of life, and that as he had already told me, he was getting to be near-sighted, and had some doubts whether he could discern an object like the sun, that was known to be so many thousands of millions of miles from the earth.

These scruples, however, were overcome by my cleaning the glasses, preparing a barrel for him to stand on, that he might be at the customary elevation above his horizon, and putting the instrument into his hands, the mates standing near, ready to make the calculations when he gave the sun's declination.
"We are drifting south'ard, I know," said Mr.Poke before he commenced his sight--"I feel it in my bones.

We are at this moment in 79 degrees 36' 14."-- having made a southerly drift of more than eighty miles since yesterday noon.

Now mind my words, and see what the sun will say about it." When the calculations were made, our latitude was found to be 79 degrees 35' 47".

Noah was somewhat puzzled by the difference, for which he could in no plausible way account, as the observation had been unusually good and certain.