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WAUGH ON MOUNTS EVEREST AND DEODANGA. [Jan. 11, 1858. 
If the mountain Deodanga be a little north and east of the Kuti 
Pass, unless that has been grossly misplaced by all the geographers 
who have exercised their talents on it, Deodanga is not Mount 
Everest. 
I am aware that Mr. Hodgson says he has “ explained the identity 
to the Society but I see no evidence to satisfy a geographer ; and, 
were any evidence wanting to show a prejudgment of the case, we 
have his own letter, from which I quote as follows : — “ A few words 
more may be given to the last point, as being the matter which 
chiefly forced my attention, as a political officer in Nepal, on the 
site of Mount Everest, and enabled me in after years, when I heard 
surmises (from, I think, Colonel Waugh himself, or from some of his 
subordinates) of the great height of a peak in that direction, to fix 
on Deodanga or Bhairavathan (both names are used) as being 
the enormous snow mass in question, and I have often of late 
repeated this here very recently to Mr. Blandford.” All which 
demonstrates that before Mount Everest was named, or its definite 
position fixed, Mr. Hodgson had committed himself by repeated 
assertions of the identity of the forthcoming highest peak and 
Bhairavathan — an admission in itself sufficient to render all his 
evidence valueless. 
Having got this fixed idea, Mr. Hodgson next has collected data 
for Bhairavathan or Deodanga, indefinite in themselves, and which 
might apply to any mountain-peak within a considerable range, in- 
cluding Mount Everest of course. On only one of these, or rather 
on a class of them, I think further comment necessary. The posi- 
tion of Mount Everest is connected with that of Gosainthan as a 
known point, but I have shown that name is not an evidence of 
identity. Further, the position of Gosainthan given in the Physical 
Geography of the Himalayas is not that generally given even as 
regards Katmandu ; and, thirdly, that the longitude of Katmandu 
itself is uncertain to a small extent, and was so to a great amount 
till the identification of Colonel Crawford’s peaks with ours reduced 
the limits, all which tells on the position of Deodanga. 
On the whole, we have no evidence that Mr. Hodgson even saw 
Mount Everest, or that any one else ever recognised its pre-eminent 
height ; for, contrary to Mr. Hodgson's repeated assumptions, it is 
demonstrably not a very conspicuous mass from a distance. There 
is a wide difference between the manner in which the known names 
have been given and that in which it is proposed to force this on us. 
All the points to which names have been given are laid down by 
competent surveyors under those names in most eases by some of 
the men who have fixed the final position. Deodanga has never 
