Unable to speak Hottentot and uncertain how to undertake this urgent piece of research, he still managed to achieve his goal: Of a sudden my eye fell upon my sextant; the bright thought struck me, and I took a series of observations upon her figure in every direction. . . . [T]his being done, I boldly pulled out my measuring tape, and measured the distance from where I was to the place where she stood, and having thus obtained both base and angles, I worked out the results by trigonometry and logarithms.
