E.— GEOGRAPHY 107 



became proverbial the Section also mapped the Sinai Peninsula, and South 

 Palestine, and with that geographical instinct characteristic of its then 

 Chief, Sir Charles Close, put the international i/M on a firm basis. We 

 should notice, in passing, the significance of the 1/250000 scale so much 

 used in these early maps. If we take the J-in. as being practically 

 identical with it, and compare the areas of the world mapped at those 

 three alternative small scales 1/250000, 1/200000, and 1/300000 we find 

 that they are in the proportions 13,3 and 1. 



Since the war those two great series — the 1 /4M of Asia and the 1 /2M 

 of Africa — have proved enormously useful, and it is right to mention 

 them in passing, because it is just for such painstaking reliable maps as 

 these that we look to the Geographical Section. I have no doubt at all 

 that the best maps of Abyssinia to-day are the sheets on both these series 

 (which overlap in Arabia Felix and Abyssinia), and that they are the basis 

 of all other maps, recently published, of that country. Here is one part 

 of the original terms of reference well kept up. 



But to-day I want to speak of the other side — item (b) reliable survey 

 on the ground. In the first years of colonial expansion a general map 

 compiled from odd routes and sketches may suffice. Even so administra- 

 tion finds all sorts of difficulties. One is, everywhere, dependent on a 

 guide. There is no stocktaking of the country and its peoples. There is 

 no guide to tribal and trade movements, to the grazing grounds of the 

 different seasons, the limits of this or that local custom, or the places 

 where conflicting interests may result in friction. Then come the problems 

 of development. Where shall the railway run (we are nearly always 

 caught napping over that) ; how shall the road system develop ; where 

 are the raw materials (of which we hear so much to-day). It is absurd to 

 try to solve all these by trial and error. And finally there are many 

 vitally interested people at home, such for example as ourselves, who can 

 form no accurate mental picture without a map to work on. 



The first land surveyors to begin work in the Colonies were not, 

 however, always, or necessarily, directed by the Geographical Section. All 

 over the world, and from the earliest times, you will find that surveying 

 originates in two distinct ways, serves two separate purposes, works at 

 different scales, and survives almost everywhere, save in Great Britain, 

 in the form of overlapping survey departments to-day. The one is the 

 property survey which safeguards property rights and forms the basis 

 of land taxation, and the other the topographical survey, usually based on 

 triangulation, which is the national stocktaking. The former is generally, 

 or was generally, carried out by a private practitioner for a client ; the 

 latter by state surveyors normally soldiers. The former is always measur- 

 ing lengths, the latter usually angles ; the former is not concerned with 

 altitudes, the latter finds much of his work in contouring. In colonial 

 expansion both these sides are required, but whereas the necessity for 

 the property surveyor is immediately obvious, the greater significance of 

 the topographer, promising rewards of the future rather than of the 

 present, is generally overlooked. 



Since, however, the property surveyor comes first in time (he was 



