62 GREAT TRIGONOMETRICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 



Marquis of Eastings, who was then Governor- General, placed it 

 under the direct and immediate control of the Supreme Government. 

 Captain Everest was shortly afterwards appointed assistant to 

 Major Lambton. In 1832 additional officers were appointed, and 

 by the year 1840, when the geodetic operations on the northern 

 sections of the Great Arc were completed, the personnel sufficed 

 for the equipment of six trigonometrical survey parties, and this 

 number of parties was uniformly maintained from that time 

 onwards, until it could be gradually diminished on the completion 

 of the successive chains of triangles. The operations have been 

 uniformly and consistently supported by the Supreme Government, 

 with the sanction and approval, first of the Honourable Court of 

 Directors of the East India Company, and afterwards of the 

 Secretary of State for India. In times of Avar and financial 

 embarrassment the scope of the operations has been curtailed and 

 establishments have been reduced, and some of the military officers 

 sent to join the armies in the field ; occasionally the civilians also 

 have been sent to the seat of war, to be employed on survey duties. 

 But whatever the crisis, the operations have never been wholly 

 suspended. Even during the troubles of 1857-58 they were 

 carried on in some districts though arrested in others. They have 

 been uninfluenced by changes of -personnel in the administration of 

 the British Indian Empire, each succeeding Governor-General or 

 Viceroy having honoured them with his support. At the close of the 

 mutinies. Lord Canning wrote as follows of the principal triangu- 

 lation and collateral topography in Kashmir to Colonel Waugh, 

 then Surveyor-General of India : — 



'•1 cannot risist telling you at once with how much satisfaction I have seen those 

 papers. It is a pleasure to turn from the troubles and anxieties with which India is 

 still beset, ami to find that a gigantic work of permanent peaceful usefulness, and one 

 which will assuredly take the highest rank as a work of scientifie labour and skill, 

 has been steadily and rapidly progressing through all the turmoil of the last two 

 years." 



and up to the last moment, the successive Government have 

 accorded their support to the operations with equal liberality and 

 constancy. It may well be doubted whether any similar under- 

 taking, executed in any other part of the world, has been equally 

 favoured and supported. 



The field operations, viz.. the measurements of the base-lines and 

 angles of the principal triangulation, being completed, the next 



