E.— GEOGRAPHY 1 1 3 



they have been trained are simple and undeviating. It is curious to note 

 that they are very much those of Roy and Mudge. During the first (and 

 indeed only) topographical surveys of Great Britain (since 1855 all the 

 maps of Great Britain have been made by direct reduction from the plans) 

 the compass and chain were used instead of the plane-table, because the 

 use of the latter demands a visibility rare in this country. It is equally 

 rare in the forest belt of West Africa. Kitchener was ill-advised to 

 introduce these traverse methods into Cyprus and Palestine, but Guggis- 

 berg made no mistake in basing his west coast surveys upon them. A 

 remarkable instance of what can be done in this way is offered by Sierra 

 Leone where the whole of the hinterland has been mapped at the i-in. 

 scale by native surveyors under the supervision of officers of the Royal 

 Engineers. It is an equally striking commentary on our methods that 

 the greater part of this excellent series remains in manuscript, and does 

 not look like publication for many a long day. In the higher and drier 

 plateaux of East Africa the natural implement is the plane-table. So far, 

 however, no topographical native plane-tablers have been trained. I am 

 convinced that they could be raised, trained, and made efficient. It 

 seems to me absurd to maintain that the standard of intelligence is lower 

 amongst the Bantus than among the Negroes. Whenever the question 

 has been discussed, however, it has been assumed that instrumental and 

 mathematical questions are at stake. They are not. Plane-tabling 

 demands qualities of craftsmanship and honesty, but has practically 

 nothing to do with instrumental or mathematical surveying. Presently, 

 no doubt, common sense will have its way. Meanwhile native labour 

 comes in slowly with the beginnings of printing, and gradually the 

 Colonial Surveys of Africa will follow the model of the surveys of India, 

 Ceylon, and Malaya. It is, however, due to the lack of proper organisa- 

 tion that the amount of reliable survey in our second period is not more 

 than a third of that contributed by the first. 



It is at this point that the intelligent modern layman begins to talk of air 

 survey. This term was invented for the sake of brevity, and means ' The 

 survey (by any one of a variety of methods) of ground from photographs 

 taken of it from the air.' The photographic image is a perspective view 

 of a solid body (of three dimensions). To extract the plan of two dimen- 

 sions and to add the third in the form of contours is perfectly possible at 

 a scale not smaller than 2\ in. to the mile (smaller than that the photo- 

 graph becomes unreadable). As a method it is invaluable where surveyors 

 cannot get on the ground, and is probably without a rival at such a scale 

 as the 6-in. No one who was able to get to the ground would dream of 

 making a \- or J-in. map of an open plateau in this way because of the 

 expense. 



It may be taken as proved that we need not hope for topography from 

 the existing staffs of Colonial Survey Departments. They are not in 

 sufficient numbers, and the value of their education and training implies 

 a salary higher than should be paid for the work. 



None of these factors, however, affects the solution employed during our 

 first period, viz. from 1900 to 191 3. Then the topographical mapping was 



