—_ : Rt ai 
OctToBER 5, 1916] 
NATURE 
93 
been faced with quite such a problem. The difficul- 
ties were not merely those of mountaineering and 
excessive altitude or of narrow valleys flanked by 
gigantic mountain walls. These regions are sub- 
ject, inter alia, to storms of great violence and 
suddenness, and it was during one such storm 
that the camp of a native assistant was struck and 
his whole party practically put out of action. The 
roads, or mountain tracks, which lead tothe passes 
of the Hindu Kush have often been described by 
travellers, and there is no indication in this report 
that they have improved of late years. Certainly 
no very great trouble was caused by the nature of 
the transport requisitioned. All sorts and condi- 
tions of men were impressed into service. The regu- 
lar native staff of the Survey Department and the 
trained Gurkha assistants drawn from the frontier 
* P56 Pk.19 Pre Sf Pu 
4aP 4aL 42L 
18300 22.891 aos 25,540 
Fic. 3.—The distant Karakoram Range from Tomtek, h.s. 18,608 ft 
regiments were all trustworthy under any -condi- 
tions of stress and difficulty, whilst the coolie 
carriers, who were chiefly recruited from the 
Baltis, were quite satisfactory. “Lieut. Mason’s 
appreciation of their services is pleasant reading, 
and speaks well for his tact and consideration in 
dealing with natives. 
It was, on-the whole, the technical difficulty of 
selecting sites for stations of observation, and the 
incessant demand for ‘strenuous exertion in climb- 
ing mountains which possess absolutely no attrac- 
tion beyond that of the grandest and most savage | 
scenery in the world, which hindered the progress | 
of the party; and it was the successful facing of 
these difficulties which rendered the completion of 
this series such a brilliant achievement among the 
great records of Indian triangulation. 
NO. 2449, VOL. 98] 
The work in the Pamir highlands was laid out 
by Lieut. Bell, R.E., whose sudden death ere the 
work was completed was deeply felt by the whole 
party. The linking up of two magnificent systems 
of triangulation, such as those of India and 
Russia, which would give a continuous and un- 
broken geodetic system of earth measurement 
through sixty degrees of latitude, has ever been a 
most fascinating objective to the scientific geo- 
desist in India, Russia, and England; but whether 
a narrow series such as this, with uneven sides 
and angles as factors in the successive figures, will 
fully satisfy the requirements of geodesy may be 
questionable. Some of the sides of the figures 
are very short, restricted by narrowness of the 
Hunza Valley, and the angles are far from ful- 
filling ‘the condition of equality in arc. It is, 
From “ Records of the Survey of India.” 
therefore, not claimed for it by the Surveyor- 
General of India that it represents anything more 
than a “secondary ” series, and it still remains for 
geodesists to say how far it has succeeded in ful- 
filling the high scientific requirements that were 
anticipated from its completion. Incidentally, 
however, it has been of the greatest practical use, 
for it has confirmed the values determined by the 
measurements of the Pamir Boundary Commission 
in 1895, and proved that the process then adopted 
of interpolation from distant and definite peaks 
(which were already fixed by the Indian triangula- 
tion on the Gilgit frontier), supported by a 
constant repetition of observed azimuths, was 
accurate to a degree which seems to have been 
unexpected by the present Survey Staff in India, 
although the coincidence in final values causes no 
