The Great Arc Read online

  For a man who had been far from well for the past twenty years, Everest’s homecoming had had a dramatic effect. Reaching England in 1844, he settled first in the Leicestershire countryside, where he was soon riding with the local hunt, and then in London. In 1845 he visited the USA, and in the following year, back in London, he married. He was then fifty-five. To Everest, as to Lambton, the joys of family life constituted a last great discovery. Seemingly his bride shared this sense of achievement. Although Emma Wing was less than half his age, she proved to be a devoted wife who over the next ten years bore him six children.

  The last glimpse of the great man, as later recollected by his eldest surviving son, reveals a contented old gentleman, friendly with the explorer David Livingstone, the chemist Michael Faraday and other notable contemporaries. Adopting that leonine beard and hairstyle, he enjoyed the plaudits of the scientific societies but was just as content playing the Victorian father. The day began with family prayers ‘at which the servants attended’. ‘My father was a firm believer in God as every Freemason ought to be.’ There might follow a few hours’ work, perhaps on a mouth-watering paper like that ‘On Instruments and Observations for Longitude for Travellers on Land’ (published in 1859), and then a lecture at the Royal Institution.

  Most days there was also time for a bit of parental instruction. With his offspring perched on high stools at a long deal table, he introduced them to the mysteries of elementary arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and ‘learning something about logarithms’. Perhaps, too, there were tales about the tigers he had never met and the mountain he had never seen. He died in London in 1866, aged seventy-six, and was buried in Hove, near Brighton.

  No statue has ever been erected in his memory. George Everest, like William Lambton and like their Great Arc, was soon forgotten. But where history is oblivious, geography is tenacious. By having, in the words of Waugh’s successor as Surveyor-General, ‘placed his name just a little nearer the stars than that of any other lover of the eternal glory of the mountains’, the maps continue to acknowledge their debt to the ever-restless genius of George Everest.

  A Note on Sources

  Anyone familiar with R.H. Phillimore’s Historical Records of the Survey of India (5 vols, Dehra Dun, 1950–68) will recognise my principal debt. Without Colonel Phillimore’s monumental, if eye-straining, digest of the Survey’s records, this book could scarcely have been written. Phillimore’s volumes I-IV are available in many libraries but volume V, which deals with the period 1843–60, was withdrawn because of the strategic sensitivity of some of the subject-matter. Only three copies are known to exist in the UK – one each in the British Library and in the libraries of the Institute of Chartered Surveyors and of the Royal Geographical Society. Clements R. Markham, A Memoir of the Indian Surveys (London, 1871), has a useful map of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, but has otherwise been superseded by Phillimore.

  The Asiatic Society of Bengal’s Asiatick Researches, vols VI-XIV (Calcutta, 1804–22), contain Lambton’s reports, mostly of a technical nature. Vol. XII includes Henry Colebrooke’s paper ‘On the Heights of the Himalaya Mountains’, Vol. XIII has Webb’s memoir on his Kumaon survey, and Vol. XIV the findings of Hodgson and Herbert in Garhwal. The reports of Crawford’s observations in Nepal and the extracts from Robert Colebrooke’s diary are as per Phillimore vols II-III. The Godfrey Thomas Vigne extract is from Travels in Kashmir, Ladakh, Iskardo etc. (London, 1842).

  The Quarterly Review’s critique of Colebrooke’s paper appears in its July 1817 issue in Vol. XVII; its retraction is tucked away in a review of Alexandre de Humboldt’s Sur l’Elevation des Montagnes de l’Inde in the January 1820 issue in Vol. XXII. For Playfair’s review of Lambton’s work see the Edinburgh Review of July 1813 in Vol. XXI. And for James Prinsep’s account of the Calcutta base-line see Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1832).

  Most of the Everest extracts are from his An Account of an Arc of the Meridian (London, 1830), An Account of a Measurement of Two Sections of a Meridional Arc (2 vols, London, 1847) and A Series of Letters Adressed to HRH the Duke of Sussex (London, 1839). These contain Everest’s own, not impartial accounts of his work. They have been supplemented by reference to Phillimore’s extracts from his correspondence in the Survey’s archives.

  The bicentenary of Everest’s birth in 1990 occasioned a couple of symposia which resulted in the Survey of India’s Souvenir of the Birth Centenary of Col. Sir George Everest (Dehra Dun, 1990) and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors’ Colonel Sir George Everest: A Celebration of the Bi-centenary of his Birth (London, 1990). Papers on the life of Everest by J.R. Smith, on the triangulation of the Cape of Good Hope by Colin Martin and Roger Fisher, and on map-making policy in India by Matthew Edney were found particularly relevant.

  On an earlier occasion, the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, a useful summary of the ‘Heights and Names of Mount Everest and Other Peaks’ by J. de Graaff-Hunter appeared in Occasional Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society, No. 15, October 1953.

  Other works which proved helpful include: Simon Berthon and Andrew Robinson, The Shape of the World (London, 1991); Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geography of India (London, 1997); J. Howard Gore, Geodesy (London, 1891); Arthur R. Hinks, Maps and Survey (Cambridge, 1913); Kenneth Mason, Abode of Snow (London, 1955); W.A. Seymour (ed.), A History of the Ordnance Survey (London, 1980); R. Smyth and H.L. Thuillier, A Manual of Surveying for India (Calcutta, 1851); John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers (London, 1981).

  Finally, some details have been drawn from three of my own books: India Discovered (London, 1981 and 1993), on Mackenzie and the early surveys; The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company (London and New York, 1991), on the political background; and When Men and Mountains Meet (London, 1977), reprinted in The Explorers of the Western Himalayas (London, 1996), on the Kashmir Survey.

  Index

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  Achola 84–5

  Agra 43, 81, 90, 127

  extension of Great Arc beyond 106, 117

  provisional limit of Great Arc 18, 75, 82, 98

  surveyed 130–1

  Akbar, Emperor 130–1

  Andes 39, 46, 47, 49, 115

  Andhra Pradesh 1

  Anglo-Maratha wars 42–3

  Anglo-Mysore Wars 19, 20, 22–3, 51

  Anglo-Nepalese treaty 42

  Anglo-Nepali War, see Gurkha War

  Ararat, Mount 39

  Arcadia 143, 145, 157

  Armstrong, John 144, 164–5

  Asiatic Society of Bengal 39, 40, 47, 107, 167, 169

  Asiatick Researches 20, 156, 173

  Assam 160

  Assaye, battle of 42

  astronomical observation 8–9, 27, 48, 69–70, 82, 154–5

  Astronomical Circles 151, 154

  observatories 7, 70, 154

  Zenith Sectors 29, 70, 73, 96, 118

  Baird, General David 22

  Bangalore 52, 54–5, 59–60, 73

  barometers 118–19, 124

  base-lines 8–9, 28, 54, 59, 98–100, 104, 107–8, 116, 122–3, 139, 143–4, 150–2, 153, 161–2

  height measurements 33–5

  length measurements 30, 31, 33, 55

  Begampet 6

  Bengal 21, 22, 23, 42, 105, 106, 108, 162

  Bengal Survey 38–9, 41, 43

  Berar 95, 96

  Betwa river 98

  Bhagalpur 40, 46

  Bhataona 147–8

  Bhopal 97

  Bhutan 38–9, 40, 42

  Bidar 74, 95, 153, 154–5

  Bihar 21, 41, 42–3, 164

  Boileau, Capt. Alexander 128, 131–2

  Bombay 21, 42, 82, 85

  Bombay Longitudinal Series 82, 84, 89, 99, 104, 106, 158

  Brittany
59

  Bulandshahar 147

  Calcutta 21, 23, 29, 42, 82, 107, 108

  base-line 104, 106–8, 122, 127, 160, 174

  Survey headquarters in 109, 141–2

  Calcutta Longitudinal Series 82, 104–6, 109, 135, 136, 160

  Calcutta Meridional Series 163

  Canada 19, 24, 32

  Cape of Good Hope 87

  Cary, William 30, 72

  Cassini family 24

  Cawnpore (Kanpur) 45

  Chambal river 148

  Chimborazo 39, 115

  cholera 80

  Chomo Lhari 38–40

  Chorakullee 86, 89

  Chur, The 113–14, 117, 118–21, 123, 138, 143, 153, 162

  Clark, William xix

  Clive, Lord Robert 38

  Coimbatore 60

  Colby, Thomas 103

  Colebrooke, Charlotte 44–5

  Colebrooke, Henry 40–1, 43, 46–9, 59, 114–15, 163, 173

  Colebrooke, Robert 40–1, 43–6, 47–8, 53, 63, 115, 159, 173

  Comorin, Cape (Kanya Kumari) 9, 60, 154

  compensation bars 103–4, 107–8, 143–4, 151, 153, 161

  Crawford, Charles 35–8, 41, 46, 47, 166, 173

  Darjeeling 159, 163–4

  Dateri 147

  Davis, Samuel 76

  Deccan plateau 86

  Dehra Dun 29, 49, 141–2, 143, 144, 152, 157

  De La Caille, Abbé 87–8

  Delambre, Jean-Baptiste 76

  Delhi 21, 42, 43, 81, 106, 127, 128, 135–6

  de Penning, Joe 68

  de Penning, Joshua: background 69

  family of 68, 95

  heads Calcutta office 95, 109, 142, 144

  fieldwork 85, 89–90, 96

  relations with Everest 85, 94–5, 156–7

  resignation 94–5, 97

  Desideri, Ippolito 38

  Dharoor 86, 89

  Dhaulagiri 46–7, 48, 124, 163

  Dinwiddie, Dr 29, 30, 71, 151

  Dove, Charles 135

  droogs 51–3, 129

  Dun 137, 140–1

  Everest’s baseline 143–6, 152, 160–2

  Herbert’s base-line 122, 143

  Hodgson’s base-line 116–17, 143

  earth: composition of 27–8, 73, 121

  curvature of xix, 25–7, 69–70, 71, 87, 140, 154–5

  East India Company 20–1, 76, 102, 106

  Ecuador 26, 39

  Edinburgh Review 75, 174

  elephants 5, 44, 53, 127, 137

  Ellichpur (Achalpur) 95, 96–7

  Everest, George xxi, 34, 71

  on accident to Great Theodolite 62–4, 66

  appearance 92, 171

  appointed to Survey 10, 18, 64, 68, 75–6

  background 10, 106

  death 172

  fieldwork 1–13, 80, 84–7, 96–9, 127, 128–38, 150–2, 154

  on Garhwal survey 124

  home leave 101–4

  house of, see Hathipaon

  honours xx, 102, 171

  ill health 12–14, 78, 95–6, 99, 101, 146, 151

  as innovator 84, 87–9, 97, 128

  on Lambton 67, 77–8

  marriage 171

  mental breakdown 99, 152, 153

  mountain named after xvii, 14–15, 166–7, 171

  personality of 3–4, 11, 14–15, 64, 69, 94, 100, 109, 134, 145–6, 150, 152

  portraits of 92, 141

  relations with Indians 148, 170

  relations with Lambton 75, 77, 85

  relations with staff 69, 93–5, 99–101, 134–7, 142, 156–7

  reports of 58, 80, 84, 138, 155, 156, 174

  retirement 156, 171–2

  scientific papers 172

  as Superintendent of G.T. Survey 70, 83, 93–4, 142–3

  as Surveyor-General 102, 103, 109, 141–2, 166

  unpopularity of 94, 169

  Everest, Mount: height ascertained 164–7, 168

  naming of xvii, 15, 166–7, 168–71

  Faraday, Michael 171

  Fatehpur Sikri 130, 131

  flares 131–2

  France 22, 24, 26, 59, 61, 76

  Academy of Sciences 76

  ‘Frances’ 68, 78

  Ganges, river 43, 44–5, 63, 109, 128, 140

  Gangetic delta 105

  Gangetic plain 75, 81–2, 98, 105, 117, 127, 159

  sources of 115, 116, 120

  Gangotri 125

  Garhwal 49, 116, 123–5, 127, 159, 173

  Garling, Lt James 80

  geodesy xix, 24, 26, 34, 56, 65, 71, 73, 76, 87–8, 121–2, 154–5

  Ghats 57

  Godavari river 1, 6, 11, 12, 97

  see also Kistna-Godavari region

  Gogra river 44

  gopurams 61–2

  Gorakhpur 44, 46

  Great Arc of the Meridian 9

  completion of 108, 139, 146–7, 150, 152, 156

  and Himalayas 49–50

  as Lambton’s brain-child xix, 14, 18, 23–4, 27–8, 49

  map of xv

  significance of xix–xxi, 14, 81

  Great Theodolite 72, 96, 105, 148

  accidents and repairs to 62–4, 66, 101

  overhaul 108

  rebuilding of 101, 138

  shipping of 30, 31–2

  transport of 54

  Great Trigonometrical Survey of India 3, 124, 127, 143, 156

  beginning of 28

  casualty rates 7, 80, 159

  cost 7, 81, 83

  and Great Arc 9

  grid-iron system 83–4, 105, 108–9, 158, 160

  and imperialism xix–xx, 83–4, 170

  local reactions to 52–3, 148–9, 170

  meridional series 159

  official designation of 74

  priority of 44, 102–3

  reappraisal of 81

  recalculations 71–2, 153

  reorganisation 109–10

  scale of 73–4

  staff of 68–9, 93–6, 103, 144

  survey methods 6–9, 10–11

  survey parties 53–4, 72

  Greenwich 9

  ground measurements 8, 23, 28–9, 30–1, 33, 43, 55, 122

  Gurkha (Anglo-Nepali) War 49, 115–16

  Gwalior 127, 149–50

  Haidar Ali 22

  Haramukh 168

  Hathipaon 111–13, 116, 138, 140–3, 151, 152, 156–7, 162

  Havell, William 78

  Hedin, Sven 170

  height measurements 33–6

  Herbert, James 121–6, 128, 143, 159, 163, 173

  Himalayas 15, 21, 81, 105, 106, 110, 116, 138, 159

  base-line 143–4

  early accounts of 38–9

  early surveys 116–25

  Everest’s survey 113–14, 139, 144

  foothills 43, 127

  and Great Arc xviii, 15

  heights of peaks 25, 35–42, 45–50, 59, 76, 82, 114–16, 123–6, 160–8

  map of 161

  Hindustan 96, 99, 117, 127, 128

  Hinganghat 16–17, 58, 90, 93

  Hodgson, Brian 169

  Hodgson, Capt. John 116–23, 125, 127, 140, 143, 159, 163, 173

  Hoshangabad 97

  Hughli river 107

  Humboldt, Alexander von 124, 173

  Hyderabad 2, 9, 68, 117, 153

  casualty rate in 80–1

  Everest in 2–15, 18, 64, 136, 150

  Nizam of 2, 60, 69, 74

  relocation of 70

  India: British xix, xx, 2, 21–3, 42–3, 82–4, 141–2, 169–70

  map of xxiv–xxv

  mapping of 14, 23, 28, 59

  Indian Mutiny 135, 169–70

  Irish Survey 102–3, 107, 135

  isostasy 73

  Java 10

  Jervis, Thomas 147

  Jhansi 98

  Jinji 51

  Jones, Sir William 39–40, 42, 46, 76

  Jumna, river 43, 45, 98, 115, 116, 128, 140

  K2 168–9

 
Kaliana 154–5

  Kangchenjunga 162–4, 168

  Karakoram xvii, 168–9

  Karnataka 51, 55

  Kashmir xvii, 168–9

  Kater, Henry 58, 68, 69, 72

  Kathmandu 35, 42, 115, 159

  Kaveri delta 60, 61, 82

  Kedarnath 115, 124

  Keelan, Henry 134–5, 144

  Kerala 66

  Kirke, Lt Henry 144–5

  Kistna river 1, 4–5, 6

  Kistna-Godavari region 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9. 57, 78, 80, 84, 93, 96, 99

  Kumaon 49, 116, 123–4, 159, 173

  Kumbakonam 61

  Kummerboo 67–8

  Lambton, William xix–xx, 117, 122, 170

  accuracy of 43–4, 49–50, 55, 56–7, 59, 64

  ageing of 75, 77–8

  appearance 19–20

  arrival in India 19–20

  birth of 18

  death of 89–90, 93

  domestic circumstances 32, 67–8, 78

  fame of xx, 75, 85

  fieldwork 30–4, 52–63, 72, 117, 129

  grave of 16–18

  Great Arc as brain-child of xix, xx, 9, 14, 18, 23–4, 27–8, 49

  health of 58, 78–9

  honours 76

  military career 18–19, 22

  personality 16, 19–20, 64–5, 66, 77–8

  portrait of 78

  relations with Everest 12, 75, 77

  relations with staff 68–9, 85, 94

  reports of 32, 66, 72, 73, 156, 173

  scholarly monographs 20, 32

  as Superintendent of Survey 3, 11, 16

  withdrawal from Survey 77

  Lambton, William junior 68

  La Place, Pierre 76

  Lapland 26

  latitude 26–7, 28

  Lawrence, Sir Henry 155

  length, standards of 71–2

  levelling 34–5

  Lewis, Meriwether xix