796 



REPORT — 1884. 



I 



I 



among the most priniitivt' hill tribes, the uarrative reports of the olUcevs of the 

 Indian Survey are full of ethnographic and other curious information. Take fur 

 example the account given by ^Ir. G. A. McGill, in 1882, of the Bishnoies of llaj. 

 piitana, a class of people, he says, who live by themselves, and are seldom to !> 

 found in the same village with "the other castes. ' These peojjle liohl saered every- 

 thing animate and inanimate, carrying this belief so far that they never even out 

 down a green tree ; they also do all in their power to prevent otlier.s from doinp 

 the same, and this is why they live apart from other people, so as not to witiiex 

 the taking of life. The Bishnoies, uidike the rest of the inhabitants, strictly avdM 

 drink, smoking and eating opiimi ; this being prohibited to them by tiieir religion, 

 They are also stringently enjoined to monogamy and to the performance of regular 

 ablutions daily. Under all these circumstances, and as may be expected, the Blsh- 

 noies are a well-to-do community, but are abhorred by the other ])eople, especialh 

 as by their domestic and frugal habits they soon get rich, and are the owners of tbt; 

 best lands in the country.' 



In one particular, the experience of the Indian Survey carries a lesson to this 

 country. ' A constantly growing demand,' says General Walker, ' has risen of 

 late years for new surveys on a large scale, iu supersession of the small scale surveys 

 which were executed a generation or more ago. . . . The so-called topograpliicat 

 surveys of those days were in reality geographical reconnaissances sufiicieut for all 

 the requirements of the Indian atlas, and for general reproduction on small scales, 

 but not for purposes which demand accurate delineation of minute detail.' We 

 have in the Canadian North- West, a region which has not yet passed beyond the 

 preliminary stage, and it would probably be possible to save much future expendi^ 

 ture by timely adoption of the r.iore rigorous system. Tiiere is perhaps no region 

 on the globe which offers conditions more favourable for geodesy than the loi;- 

 stretch of the western plains, or where the highest problems are more likely tn 

 present themselves in relation to the form and density of the earth. The American 

 surveyors have already measured a trigonometrical base of about lO'SC miles in the 

 Sacramento Valley, the longest I believe as yet measured in any country (the Yolo 

 Base) and reported to be one of the most accurate. 



14. The Australian continent has been crossed again from east to west, on the 

 parallel of 28° South or thereabouts, by Mr. W. ^\'hittield .Mills. Start ing from 

 Beltana, near I^ake Torrens, S.A., on June (!, 1883, and travelling almost duewest, 

 he finally reached the coast at Northampton, W.A., in January last, after great 

 suffering from want of water. But for the introduction of camels, the expedition 

 must have broken down. On one occasion they were eleven or twelve days without 

 water. He reports a great extent of available pasturage between the Wnrbirton 

 range and the Blyth watershed ; but he found only three perennial sources of water 

 supply in 1,600 miles ; such conditions give more than usual interest to the recent 

 discovery that subterranean supplies may be expected all over a cretaceous area esti- 

 mated at 120,000 square miles in the central region of the Australian continent. 

 Good water was struck in April last by an artesian boring at a depth of 1,220 feet at 

 Turkannina, lat. 30" S., long. 138^° E. It is difficult to overrate the importance 

 of this discovery, the supply being very abundant, and not likely to fail, since it? 

 sources are believed by Mr. Brown, the Government geologist, to be derived from 

 the rainfall of the southern watershed of the Queensland and Northern ranges. 



Mr. Mills started with thirty camels, attended by five Afghan drivers; six of 

 them died from the effects, as was supposed, of eating poisonous herbage. Mr. 

 Mills did not deviate much from the tracks of the kte >rr. W. C. Gosse, andof 

 Mr. J. Forrest, his journey has therefore added little to previous geographical 

 knowledge, but it has helped to make the route better known, and afforded fresh 

 evidence that the value of the camel in those terrible Australian Saharas is in no 

 degree less than it is where he has long been known as the * ship of the desert.' 



Another traveller, Mr. C. Winnecke, starting from the Oowarie station on 

 the Warburton River, in 28° S. has traversed about 400 miles of new coun- 

 try in a northerly direction, and made a .sketch map of 40,000 square milt'St 

 up to Goyders Pillars, a remarkable natural feature in the Tarleton range. He 

 too owed his success to the employment of camel.«, which he describes as ' behavinj; 



1 ' i' ■■ 'i iitiii ■ 



