670 REPORT— 1902. 



scientific knowledge and literary ability displayed in their technical literature on 

 the subject. Colonel Laussedat's contribution to the ' History of Topography ' is 

 to be reckoned with as a standard work. In Canada and North America we have 

 perhaps a practical exposition of the art of geographical surveying which is as un- 

 equalled in completeness and comprehensiveness as the country with which it has 

 to deal is unequalled as a subject for its application. There the close association 

 between geological structure and geographical conformation is so fully recognised 

 that the same technical process of surveying is applied for the purpose of the double 

 illustration. The Canadian geological survey is their geographical survey, and 

 I think that it is to Canada (if not to India) that we owe the first recognition of 

 the fact that geographical surveying is a separate, distinct, and most important 

 branch of the general art, which should form the basis — the mother survey as it 

 were — from which all other surveys should spring. In India I am happy to 

 think that this advance in the science of geography is now well understood. It 

 has been more or less forced on us by the necessity for such rapid and comprehen- 

 sive surveys as are required for frontier military operations, for the purposes of 

 boundary demarcation, and for the important duty of Iceeping our own trans- 

 frontier information up to the level of that of our neighbours. In our African 

 colonies it has, alas ! been discovered a little too late that geographical 

 surveys are a sound preliminary to military operations, but the discovery 

 once made it is not likely to be overlooked. Here, indeed, was presented 

 a most forcible illustration of the danger of building up a geographical puzzle 

 map ; of piling one on to another the results of local fiscal surveys in the hope 

 that when they were all put together they might make a good topographical guide 

 to the country. Needless to say the result was disastrous from the scientific point 

 of view, and it might almost be said of it that it was disastrous from the military 

 point of view as well. Imagine for an instant that the Canadian system of a 

 geological survey (involving of course accurate topography) had been applied 

 ab initio to South Africa, who can possibly say what the result might not have 

 been by this time ? The expansion of the Randt mines, for example, depends at 

 present on local experiment carried out no doubt by most able engineers with all 

 the knowledge of scientific mining that is to be acquired in these days of advanced 

 specialism. But all the same I may be permitted to suggest that their experi- 

 mental ventui-es, their tentative borings, are subject to a good deal thai is almost 

 guess work for their application, and that a comprehensive, carefully conducted 

 geological survey of the whole country would probably have afforded valuable 

 indications in many unexpected directions. So also as regards schemes for 

 local irrigation. Take the north-western part of Cape Colony, for instance, the 

 district known as the Karoo, where the best military map existing at the time of 

 the war did not even pretend to show the main roads through the country. The 

 stage of development at which that part of the colony has arrived in the all- 

 important matter of local irrigation is only worthy of the Dark Ages. It would 

 be laughed at in Persia or Afghanistan. The Arabs of mediaeval times were 

 experts in the art of the conservancy and distribution of water in dvj lands com- 

 pared to the modern South African (or South American) farmer. Now I do not say 

 that schemes for merely local irrigation require geographical maps to support them. 

 Such schemes only require a little enterprise, a little common sense, and a little 

 capital, but I do say that the geographical map would long ago have revealed the 

 opportunity for comprehensive schemes, such as exist in India, just as it would have 

 pointed out the best alignment for roads and railways, the best means for dealing 

 with an enemy who can move fifty miles in a night, and who can make, not merely 

 a few square miles, but a whole district the theatre of his operations. What was 

 wanted (and is still wanted) in South Africa is what is wanted in every part of the 

 continent subject to British suzerainty. I know that I am but echoing the urgent 

 demand which has been made by every commissioner and governor within the 

 limits of that vast area — not for elaborate or special maps for fiscal and revenue 

 purposes, all of which will come in due time — but for scientific geography which 

 shall now take the place of the preliminary work of pioneer explorers, and deal 

 with the country as a whole instead of tracing it in outlines and in disjointed 



