Ty) We REPORT— 188). 
number of the internal meridional chains has latterly been diminished by widening 
the spaces between them, and in two instances a principal chain has been dispensed 
with because, before it could be taken in hand, a good secondary triangulation had 
been carried over the area for which it was intended to provide. But these are 
departures from the letter rather than the spirit of Everest’s programme, which has 
been faithfully followed throughout, first by his immediate successor, Sir Andrew 
Waugh, and afterwards by myself, thus attording an instance of the impress of a 
single mind on the work of half a century which is probably unique in the annals 
of India; for there, as is well known, changes of personal administration are 
frequent, and are not uncommonly followed by changes of procedure. 
The physical features of a country necessarily exercise a considerable influence 
on the operations of any survey that may be carried over it, and more particularly 
on those of a geodetic survey, of which no portion is allowed to fall below a certain 
standard of precision. very variety of feature, of scenery, and of climate that is 
to be met with anywhere on the earth’s surface between the equator and the arctic 
regions has its analogue between the highlands of Central Asia aad the ocean, 
which define the limits of the area covered by the Indian survey. Thus in some parts 
the operations were accomplished with ease, celerity, and enjoyment, while in others 
they were very difficult and slow of progress, always entailing great exposure, and 
at times very deadly. In an open country, dotted with hills and commanding 
eminences, they advanced as on velvet; in close country, forest-clad or covered 
with other obstacles to distant vision, they were greatly retarded, for there it 
became necessary either to raise the stations to a suflicient height to overlook all 
surrounding obstacles, or to render them mutually visible by clearing the lines 
between them; and both these processes are more or less tedious and costly. 
There are many tracts of forest and jungle which greatly impeded the operations, 
not merely because of the physical difficulties they presented, but because they 
teemed with malaria, and were very deadly during the greater portion of the year, 
and more particularly immediately after the rainy seasons, when the atmosphere is 
usually clearest and most favourable for distant observations. At first tracts of 
forest, covering extensive plains, were considered impracticable; thus Lambton 
carried his network over the open country, and stopped it whenever it reached a 
great plain covered with forest and devoid of hills; but Everest’s system would 
not permit of any break of continuity, nor the abandonment of any chain which 
was required to complete a gridiron; it has been carried out in all its integrity, 
often with much sacrifice of life, but never with any shrinking on the part of the 
survey officers from carrying out what it had become a point of honour with them 
to accomplish, and the accomplishment of which the Government had come to re- 
gard as a matter of course. We have already seen how the progress of Everest’s 
first chain of triangles was suddenly arrested, because he and all his people were 
struck down by malaria in the pestilential regions of the Godavery basin. That 
chain remained untouched for fifty years; it was then resumed and completed, 
but with the loss of the executive oflicer, Mr. George Shelverton, who succumbed 
when he had not yet reached, but was within sight of, the east coast line, the goal 
towards which his labours were directed. Many regions, as the basin of the Maha- 
naddi, the valley of Assam, the hill ranges of Tipperah, Chittagong, Arracan, and 
Burma, and those to the east of Moulmein and Tennasserim, which form the 
boundary between the British and the Siamese territories, are covered with dense 
forest, up to the summits of the peaks which had to be adopted as the sites of the 
survey stations. Asarule the peaks were far from the nearest habitation, and they 
could not be reached until pathways to them had been cut through forests tangled 
with a dense undergrowth of tropical jungle; not unfrequently large areas had to 
be cleared on the summits to open out the view of the surrounding country. Here 
the physical difficulties to be overcome were very considerable, and they were in- 
creased by the necessity that arose, in almost every instance, of importing labourers 
from a great distance to perform the necessary clearances. But the broad belt of 
forest tract Inown as the Terai, which is situated in the plains at the foot of the 
Nepalese Himalayas, was the most formidable region of all, because the climate 
was very deadly for a great portion of the year, and more particularly during the 
