THE BIG MAN Surveying Sir George Everest

By Brinda Gill

IT am not a compass-wala, but sur­ trade, received a charter from the Crown Surveyors first establish a baseline whose veyor general and superintendent that later led to the formation of the British length is carefully measured. They then JL of the Great Trigonometrical East India Company (EIC). Throughout make line-of-sight observations to “con­ Survey of India,” remarked a visibly irked the first half of the seventeenth century, the struct” a triangle - ideally at elevation to George Everest in 1834 when a British company gained a secure foothold in maximize the length of the triangle’s sides political agent used the appellation casual­ important coastal towns and extended its and thus minimize the number of observa­ ly bestowed on all surveyors. Peace was mercantile and military activities into the tions - and measure its interior angles. restored once it was agreed that all official subcontinent’s interior. Expansion acceler­ Once these angles have been ascertained, correspondence would refer to him as ated further after 1757, when British forces the length of the two other sides of the tri­ Surveyor General Sahib Bahadur, a title under Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of angle can be calculated from the length of that truly reflected his dedication to sur­ Bengal at Plassey. the baseline; they in turn become the base­ veying the vast and varied Indian topogra- With each territorial gain came new lines for additional triangles. Thus is a net­ phy. geographic information and additional work of triangles built, with all points Everest had touched Indian shores from incentive to fit that data into a recogniza­ defined with respect to one another and London as a sixteen-year-old artillery ble cartographic image of Britain’s emerg­ anchored to one precise measurement. cadet in 1806, during the early years of ing Indian empire. In 1767 the EIC The Great Trigonometrical Survey had British triangulation surveys in southern appointed James Rennell as the first sur­ its roots in William Lambton’s 1799-1800 India, before moving on to service in Java. veyor general of the Bengal, and over the triangulation survey of the Indian peninsu­ He returned to the subcontinent in 1818 to next half-decade Rennell completed what la south of the Krishna River. In addition take up an appointment as chief assistant is generally regarded as the region’s first to a web of triangles across the region’s to William Lambton in the newly chris­ systematic survey, during which he com­ meridians, Lambton also intended to meas­ tened Great Trigonometrical Survey bined topographical measurements taken ure an arc of parallel by constructing trian­ (GTS), succeeded Lambton as superinten­ by fixed chains with astronomical obser­ gles running north from Cape Comorin at dent of the GTS when the Lambton died in vations. He then drew on these results and the peninsula’s southern tip, an arc later to 1823, became surveyor general of India in existing cartographic materials to compile be known as the Great Meridional Arc of 1830, and ultimately completed the meas­ maps, which he published in The Bengal India. Not only would this measurement urement of the Great Meridional Arc. Atlas of 1779 and which he included in his provide a basis for calculating the length Before he retired in 1843, he had extended 1782 Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan. of one degree of arc along the earth’s sur­ the triangles started by Lambton in the Rennell’s surveys and his maps prom­ face, it would also yield a value for the cur­ peninsula across the subcontinent and ised greater precision than previous carto­ vature of the earth, allowing all elevations developed a “gridiron” of interlocking tri­ graphic efforts - one contemporary called to be calculated in relation to sea level. angles on which the rest of a systematic Rennell’s Bengal Atlas the “foundation of Lambton won approval for his idea, survey could proceed. Moreover, despite a Indian Geography” - but the weaknesses says Edney, primarily because of the prom­ chronic lack of resources and skilled labor, of his methods were increasingly apparent, ise of a trigonometrical survey’s accuracy confusing and occasionally contradictory particularly for the construction of the and perhaps even more so because he signals from London, difficult conditions large-scale maps on which effective politi­ would serve as the agent of such a survey. in the field, and his own poor health, cal administration and military control In 1802 Lambton commenced surveying Everest oversaw and greatly influenced the rested. Astronomical observations were the Madras presidency, measuring the transformation of India surveying from often inconsistent, measurements taken baseline with 100-foot steel chains and rudimentary, overlapping, and inconsistent from route surveys even more so. In addi­ subsequent distances based on triangula­ mapping efforts based on traditional meth­ tion, even medium-scale maps required far tion. By 1818, when Everest joined him, ods and a wide variety of sources to a sin­ more information than routine route sur­ the venture had been renamed the Great gle geographic framework rooted in the veys typically provided. Moreover, a good Trigonometrical Survey and Lambton principles of triangulation. By the time he amount of Rennell’s information came not appointed as its first superintendent. Five set sail from India for the final time, the from direct observation, but from a wide years later, at Lambton’s death, the GTS GTS had become what Matthew Edney has variety of European and indigenous had surveyed 165,342 square miles of ter­ described in Mapping an Empire as a sources, very few of which shared com­ ritory from the peninsula to the Vindhya “proper institution” and had laid the foun­ mon standards. Triangulation, by provid­ Mountains in Central India. dations for what would become, thirty ing a dense network of control points Despite these gains, however, the GTS years later, the Survey of India. whose relative positions are fixed very didn’t replace conventional topographical accurately, promised a solid and accurate and astronomical surveying as the pre­ A Survey So Far alternative as well as a more reliable ferred method for compiling data about In 1600 a group of British merchants, framework for incorporating existing geo­ India’s geography, nor did it receive a sig­ intent on challenging the Portuguese graphic information. The method depends nificant measure of institutional support. monopoly over the lucrative Indian spice on a rigorous application of trigonometry. From the beginning the East India

The Ontario Land Surveyor, Winter 2000 9 Company fretted constantly about the costs of new and improved equipment. The processions of travelers, and dusty winds, of Lambton’s survey and wondered pub­ largest of his specially-designed theodo­ while the smoke from the oil lamps dis­ licly about his preoccupation with geodesy lites, instruments for measuring horizontal rupted readings taken at night. And sur­ at the expense of topographic information. and vertical angles, was thirty-six inches veyors often had to fix their heliotropes Company officers in London also did little in diameter and weighed more than a thou­ with bits of mirrors bought in bazaars. to clarify a number of jurisdictional dis­ sand pounds. The steel chains traditionally These technical obstacles played out putes in the field. Not only was there no used in baseline measurements were against a larger backdrop of difficulties. agreement on the best method for survey­ replaced by bi-metallic compensation bars; The surveyors were often set on by bandits ing India, there wasn’t even a consensus made of two different metals, these bars or villagers, who menaced them and on the idea of a single organization to con­ were designed to neutralize the effects of destroyed their signals and caim-marks, or duct such surveys. expansion due to increased temperatures regarded the marks as sacred and turned and thus could maintain a fixed length. them into sacrificial sites. The attacks were New Horizons Although he continued to use the estab­ widespread enough that the GTS eventual­ Into this administrative fray stepped the lished signals - stone cairns, wooden ly developed its own armed guard, sepa­ newly appointed superintendent of the poles, bundles of brushwood, cloth flags - rate from the military. Natives also object­ GTS. Less than two years after succeeding Everest believed that observations for the ed for less obvious reasons. On one Lambton, Everest returned to England on primary triangles should be made to lumi­ occasion, Zalim Singh, a landowner south health leave, a convalescence that nous signals. In the day he employed of Delhi, offered to pay for shifting an stretched out for five years. He used the heliotropes, which reflected solar rays to observation post that he thought over­ time wisely. He reviewed the geodetic fixed positions in the distance while con­ looked the zenana, or women’s residence. work underway in Europe, particularly the trolling for the movement of the sun. At An exasperated Everest remarked: Survey of Ireland, and made a careful night he used blue lights, or reverberatory “Persuaded that our telescopes . have study of surveying instruments whose fea­ lamps. The lamps, according to Everest’s magic powers, and are able to turn women tures were was particularly well suited to specifications, comprised an oil-burning upside down . they assign to us the propen­ conditions in India. He made no effort to Argand burner with glass chimney that sity of sitting all day long, spying through conceal his disdain for earlier survey was placed in the focus of a parabolic the stone walls at those whom they deem efforts on the subcontinent and took every reflector. Night observations minimized so enchanting.” opportunity to champion the cause of the the refractions that occurred during the day The far greater hardship, however, was trigonometrical survey. He proposed a due to variations in temperature. sickness and disease. As Edney has series of large, or primary, triangles The survey continued in northern India observed, the British suffered a high mor­ extending out across the subcontintent, with the new instruments. Where stations tality rate in India, but the surveyor in the thus creating a grid with control points in were not intervisible, Everest had scaffolds field seems to have been particularly vul­ all directions. Unlike Lambton’s less-sys­ constructed to mount the theodolites and nerable to jungle fever. Everest fell victim tematic survey, which built out from the high portable bamboo masts to burn the on a number of occasions, beginning in baseline, Everest’s gridiron provided a blue lights, though dismantling and trans­ 1819 when an outbreak of typhus claimed way to check for accuracy by building porting scaffolds and masts from one sta­ the lives of a tenth of his party and severe­ back to the baseline; one side of the final tion to another required much effort and ly weakened his constitution. When he was triangle was the original baseline. caused delays. In the plains fourteen tow­ struck down by malaria in 1835, he was Ultimately, Everest convinced the East ers were raised - two forty-feet high, confined to his bed for six months, during India Company’s directors in London of eleven fifty-feet high, and one sixty-feet which he complained that the ravages of the value of extending the Great high. These towers allowed Everest to the disease and the equally ravaging treat­ Meridional Arc from Central India, where maintain the system of primary triangles, ment “produced such a degree of debility he had left it, to the Himalayas in the north. whose sides were usually twenty to sixty as to make it of small apparent moment The plan involved continuing his gridiron miles long. They also served as control whether I lived or died.” In 1838, after of primary triangles across the vast points for secondary, or smaller and more contracting yet another serious disease, Yamuna-Ganges plain, long regarded as detailed, triangulations. Everest told his physician, “Except in-as- insurmountable barrier to triangulation Despite such meticulous organization far-as the work of the Great Arc is con­ because it had no natural elevations from and attention to detail, the observations cerned, I would not stay in India on any which to take line-of-sight measurements; were fraught with difficulty. Trees and account.” without man-made structures, the control man-made structures often obscured a Nevertheless, Everest refused to relax points could be no greater than about three clear line-of-sight. Such obstacles could be his high standards. When he found a one- miles apart - roughly the distance a man of removed, but only after persuading affect­ meter discrepancy between Lambton’s average height could see before the hori­ ed villagers and compensating them for the baseline measurement at Sironj in 1824 zon curved away. To compensate, the GTS destruction. Stormy weather or faulty sig­ and the same length as calculated through would have to either invest in observation naling made it difficult to see the blue the triangles from the base at Dehra Dun, a towers or significantly increase the num­ lights, which burned only for few minutes distance of some four hundred miles, he ber of observations. at planned intervals. At times they burned ordered the entire series remeasured. A Given the resources such an ambitious very brightly, giving the observer adequate 2.5-meter discrepancy in Bengal resulted plan would require, the East India time to fix it with the theodolite and note in another remeasurement. These and other Company’s endorsement was significant. his findings; at other times they burnt out corrections caused concern in London When Everest returned to India in October before a measurement could be recorded. because they delayed the progress of the 1830, he had been appointed the new sur­ The atmosphere during the day was often GTS and added significantly to its costs. veyor general of India and had a commit­ hazy due to smoke from brick and lime By the same token, a chain of triangles ment from London for a bigger staff and kilns that enveloped villages, the clouds of running along the foothills of the budget. He also brought with him a stock dust raised by cattle going out to graze, Himalayas, executed in part to correct

10 The Ontario Land Surveyor, Winter 2000 errors and eventually named the North- to Calcutta, and embarked for England Himalayas. In so doing, he had also pro­ East Longitudinal Series, produced the and retirement. After his return he contin­ vided an organized model and a set of observations from which the survey’s ued to stay in touch with geodetic work in rigorous standards that would guide later mathematicians later concluded that Peak India, and for his efforts throughout his efforts to survey India. XV was the highest mountain in the career he was knighted in 1861, an honor world. he had turned down earlier. This article first appeared in the High Praise, Indeed. Everest was similarly hesitant when July/August 2000 issue of Mercators During his last years on the subconti­ his successor as surveyor general, World. Brinda Gill is a freelance writer nent, Everest supervised the final surveys Andrew Scott Waugh, proposed naming based in Pune, India. She contributed to complete the Great Meridional Arc. the world’s highest peak after him, “in “Pilgrim’s Progress: Sacred Maps of According to his calculations he had testimony of my affectionate respect for India” to the November/December 1999 extended Lambton’s earlier work to cover a revered chief, and to perpetuate the issue o f Mercators World. The author almost half a million square miles of sur­ memory of that illustrious master of would like to thank Prof. Matthew Edney veyed ground, reaching 2,400 kilometers accurate geographical research.” Everest for his assistance in the preparation of from Cape Comorin at the southern tip of objected that the Himalayan peaks this article. She can be contacted at India to Banog near Mussorie at foothills should retain their local names. He also satyagill@vsnl. com. of the Himalayas in the north. Of his protested that “the native of India” could efforts Everest remarked, “There was no not pronounce his name, nor could it be Further Reading instance on record of a symmetrical series written in the local Devnagari script. Edney, Matthew H. Mapping an of principal triangles having been carried Nevertheless, Waugh ultimately pre­ Empire: The Geographical Construction over a country similarly circumstanced.” vailed. In 1865 the Royal Geographical of British India, 1795-1843. Chicago and As to the accuracy of his work, the base­ Society named Peak XV after the man London: University of Chicago Press, line measurement at Dehra Dun differed who had been responsible for framing the 1997. New Delhi: Oxford University by only 7.2 inches from the projected subcontinent with a gridiron of triangles Press, 1999. value computed from the remeasured and whose careful and persistent geodet­ Phillimore, R.H. The Historical baseline at Sironj. ic survey had established a modern foun­ Records of the Survey of India. Volume In September 1843 Everest left dation for measuring elevations across IV: 1830 to 1843: George Everest. jL Mussorie, sailed down the Ganges River the Indian landscape, including the Dehra Dun: Survey of India, 1958.