The work was begun on the 5th of March, much to the astonishment of the Bochjesmen, who could not at all understand it. Mokoum thought it strange for these learned men to measure the earth with rods six feet long; but any way, he had done his duty; they had asked him for a level plain, and he had found it for them.
The place was certainly well chosen. Covered with dry, short grass, the plain was perfectly level as far as the horizon. Behind lay a line of hills forming the southern boundary of the Kalahari desert; towards the north the plain seemed boundless. To the east, the sides of the tableland of Lattakoo disappeared in gentle slopes; and in the west, where the ground was lower, the soil became marshy, as it imbibed the stagnant water which fed the affluents of the Kuruman.
"I think, Colonel Everest," said Strux, after he had surveyed the grassy level, "that when our base is established, we shall be able here also to fix the extremity of our meridian."
"Likely enough," replied the Colonel. "We must find out too, whether the arc meets with any obstacles that may impede the survey. Let us measure the base, and we will decide afterwards whether it will be better to join it by a series of auxiliary triangles to those which the arc must cross."
Commencement of the Geodesic Operations.
They thus resolved to proceed to the measurement of the base. It would be a long operation, for they wanted to obtain even more correct results than those obtained by the French philosophers at Melun. This would be a matter of some difficulty: since when a new base was measured afterwards near Perpignan to verify the calculations, there was only an error of 11 inches in a distance of 330,000 toises.
Orders were given for encamping, and a Bochjesman village, a kind of kraal, was formed on the plain. The waggons were arranged in a circle like the houses, the English and Russian flags floating over their respective quarters. The centre was common ground. The horses and buffaloes, which by day grazed outside, were driven in by night to the interior, to save them from attacks of the wild beasts around.