302 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS— ASIA. [May 24, 1858. 
In alluding, however, last year to other labours of these gentle- 
men, I much regret to have unwittingly attributed to them geo- 
graphical results in the Kumaon territory which it is well known 
were mainly accomplished, more than thirty years ago, by the very 
able British officers of the Trigonometrical Survey of India; viz. 
Captains Webb, Hodgson, and Herbert.* 
In that survey, those officers measured the altitudes of such a 
number of peaks averaging upwards of 20,000 feet, that references 
were made to them by numbers instead of by printed names, among 
which the No. 14, which is the Nundi-Devi of my last year’s 
Address, was separately measured by Hodgson and Webb, the 
former placing it at 25,749, the latter at 25,669 feet — a striking 
proof of the concurrence of the independent labours of these hard- 
working and excellent geographers. 
Again, the glaciers of the river Pindur are laid down in the same 
map, and Capt. R. Strachey, Col. Madden, and other British officers 
have carefully examined these glaciers since that time. In fact, 
the orography of the mountains between the Kalee and the Sutlej, 
including Kumaon, has long been known ; though the Schlagintweits 
made some interesting additions to the physics and the pictorial 
delineation of these tracts. 
Nothing could be farther from my thoughts than not to sustain 
the hard-won laurels of the many British subjects who have earned 
great scientific reputation in the Trans-Himalayan regions ; and no 
one who has perused the * Asie Centrale ’ of Humboldt f can doubt 
that he has striven to do honour to our Moorcroft and Trebeck, the 
brothers Gerard, and all our earlier explorers, whilst in subsequent 
* See Sheet 66 of the Great Map of the Trigonometrical Survey of India, issued by 
Horsburgh, 1827. I have the more been called upon to correct this erratum in my 
preceding Address, and to register the antecedent labours of some of the many 
British geographers and engineers, in consequence of a document presented by the 
MM. Schlagintweit (in September last) to the East India Company, in which they 
specify all their intended publications, without referring to the labours of their 
numerous predecessors in the regions through which they travelled. This docu- 
ment, which was not intended for publication, unluckily found its way into a 
periodical, and naturally gave umbrage to those who thought that numerous obser- 
vations of our countrymen were slighted. In justice, however, to MM. Schlagint- 
weit, I must state that they have assured me of their having always intended to 
enumerate the labours of their predecessors, as well as to refer gratefully to all 
those persons who kindly aided them ; and they claim to be not judged by a mere 
MS. announcement of their own researches. 
f I speak only of what Europeans have done in the region under discussion ; for 
besides what was done by Moorcroft’s man, Mir Izzet Ullah (see p. 301), Major Cun- 
ningham has shown, in the Asiatic Journal of Bengal, that as early as the year a.x>. 
414 the Chinese traveller Fahia explored some of these mountainous regions ; and in 
his translation of Hiuen-Thsang’s Travels in India during the seventh century, M. 
Julien also mentions the knowledge which the Chinese had acquired of this country. 
