xu 



India was as incorrect as it was scanty ; there was an error of forty miles 

 in the breadth of the peninsula as laid down in the maps, and it was in 

 consequence of a resolution of the East-India Company to amend this 

 unsatisfactory state of things, by making their Atlas depend on trigono- 

 metrical operations, that the survey was commenced. 



Captain Everest was carrying the work through an unhealthy part of 

 the Nizam's territory when, in 1820, his health failed, and he was ordered 

 to the Cape of Good Hope to recruit. Here he employed his leisure in an 

 examination of the tract of country in which La Caille measured an arc of 

 the meridian in 1752 ; and in a letter to Colonel Lambton he reviewed the 

 circumstances under which the measurement had been made, and pointed out 

 the discrepancies between the results and those obtained in similar opera- 

 tions in the northern hemisphere. This letter, printed in the first volume 

 of * Memoirs ' published by the Astronomical Society, led eventually 

 to the remeasurement and extension of La Caille' s arc by Sir Thomas 

 Maclear. 



On the death of Colonel Lambton in 1823, Captain Everest was ap- 

 pointed Superintendent of the Survey, and devoted himself earnestly to the 

 work. In the same year he took up the survey where his predecessor had 

 left it in the valley of Berar, and extended it into the mountainous tract 

 on the north. In November 1824 he measured a base-line in the Seronj 

 valley, and in 1825 had carried the observations on to Bhaorasa, when 

 his health again gave way, and he was compelled to seek the restorative 

 climate of his native land. 



Profiting by his sojourn in England, Captain Everest made himself 

 acquainted with new scientific results bearing on his special pursuit. He 

 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1827. Part of his time was 

 spent in drawing up an account of the progress of the survey* subsequent 

 to the operations recorded by Lieut. -Col. Lambton in the * Asiatic 

 Researches," which, with tables, maps, and plans, was published at the 

 cost of the East-India Company, by whose authority it had been prepared. 

 In this work, among the many scientific details. Captain Everest gives a 

 few particulars of his personal adventures in the carrying on of the work — 

 of the severe measures by which he disciplined his native followers and 

 quelled a mutiny among them — of separation from his instruments and 

 provisions by sudden floods — of the explorations through wild jungles in 

 search of favourable observing stations — of journeyings through vast and 

 magnificent forests where, more to be dreaded than tiger or hyeena, lurked 

 the deadly typhus which prostrated him and his whole following. For 

 months he was so weak that he had to be supported by two men while 

 taking his observations at the great theodolite, and could not reach out his 

 hand to the screw of the vertical circle without assistance ; yet, though 



^ An account of the measurement of an arc of the meridian between the parallels of 

 18° 3' and 24° 7', being a continuation of the grand meridional arc of India, as detailed 

 by the late Lieut.-Col. Lambton. 4to, London, 1830. 



