ii2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



topography. They worked from the whole to the part. In that con- 

 tiguous and vast country from the Limpopo to the Egyptian border we 

 must equally work from the whole to the part, unless, in the future we 

 are content to scrap this or adjust that. At present we are working from 

 five parts. This it was that Sir David Gill hoped to avoid. His great 

 and controlling arc coming up from the south is like a steel rod with one 

 fixed, and one vibrating, end. A section lies nearly in place ready to be 

 bolted on. A long stretch remains open, and the clamp at the northern 

 end waits on the final connection. From 1900 to 191 3 2050 miles were 

 measured ; from 1922 to 1935 only 360 ! During my tour of inspection 

 in Africa (next in sequence after that of General Hills) this enterprise 

 got to be derisively known as the ' arc of the covenant.' It was indeed 

 difficult to explain its fundamental importance to minds more apt with 

 the Humanities. Yet something — if only 3 60 miles — came of my strivings : 

 a really absurd contribution to a subject which affects every geographical 

 position from Capetown to Cairo. 



On the west coast much more of this fundamental programme has been 

 tackled. There had been much activity in triangulation there before 

 the war, and after it Sir Gordon Guggisberg, first as Surveyor-General 

 and then as Governor of the Gold Coast, kept up a well-organised pro- 

 gramme. In these later days the Surveyors-General of Nigeria and the 

 Gold Coast have greatly enlarged and strengthened his earlier work. 

 It is true that on the Eastern Plateau some triangulation has been done. 

 The surveyors themselves have done their best, but in doing so are aware 

 that all their present triangulations must some day be corrected and that 

 the longer it is put off the greater will be the burden and cost of 

 adjustment. 



The next point of importance is to build, as have Great Britain and 

 India, departments economical in production and graded into specialised 

 groups. It might be very amusing to build the whole of a motor car 

 with one's own fingers, but it would be singularly uneconomical. The 

 first Colonial Survey Department to appear in order to make settlement, 

 and alienation of land, possible, is composed, as stated before, of the pro- 

 perty or cadastral element. It is staffed by men who are trained to carry 

 out, with their own hands, any and every type of instrumental measure- 

 ment of land, and thereafter to provide a finished drawing. The field 

 books containing their measurements are the records, and the justification, 

 for their finished work. Could India have ever been surveyed by a col- 

 lection of individualists each doing everything in turn ? All big survey 

 departments rest indeed upon a staff designed for mass production. The 

 trigonometrical observer is not his own computer ; the detail surveyor is 

 not the draughtsman ; and no one of the four attempts lithography. For 

 the mapping of Africa this is a vital point. Methods and processes must 

 be simplified and divided up until the staff can be doubled without 

 increase of cost. In 1907 General Hills pointed this out, during his tour 

 of inspection, and on the west coast General Sir Gordon Guggisberg, 

 began to raise a corps of native surveyors. 



These native surveyors have done well because the methods in which 



