1 April 1873

Clerical copy received April 1, 1873 from Dr John Kirk on the Zambesi to Sir Thomas Maclear (1794 - 1879). The letter refers to the care he had taken of Livingstone’s stopwatch which he had handed over to young Oswell Livingstone.

Maclear was an Irish-born Cape Colony astronomer who became Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope.

He worked with John Herschel until 1838, performing a survey of the southern sky, and continued to perform important astronomical observations over several more decades.

Between 1841 and 1848, Maclear would be occupied in performing a geodetic survey for the purpose of recalculating the figure of the Earth (its dimensions and shape) via an arc measurement. He caused a beacon to be erected on top of Table Mountain which was used as a triangulation station for the checking of de Lacaille's arc measurement.

He became close friends with David Livingstone, and they shared a common interest in the exploration of Africa. He performed many other useful scientific activities, including collecting meteorological, magnetic and tide data.

Sir John Kirk GCMG, KCB, FRS (19 December 1832 – 15 January 1922) was a British physician, naturalist, companion to explorer David Livingstone, and a British administrator in Zanzibar, East Africa, where he was instrumental in ending the slave trade in that country, with the aid of his political assistant, Ali bin Saleh bin Nasser Al-Shaiban, and Alexander Mackay, a missionary in Zanzibar.

R4,500