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
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, 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