226 
THE SCIENCE OF FRONTIER DELIMITATION. 
when lie gets into a distant part of the country. My Afghan colleague again had 
on some points no instructions, and on others, very hard and fast ones, and 
when he had to refer to his government, which was very frequently, it often took 
a fortnight, sometimes a month, and laterly two months or more to get an answer; 
and the result was a vexatious delay in delimitation work. 
I will now go on, if I may be allowed, to say a few words about demarcation. 
This, in my a opinion, is largely a question of survey work. Delimitation under 
ideal conditions ought to be so thorough that the commissioners deputed to carry 
out the results of such delimitation ought to have nothing to do but to demarcate, 
which means simply laying out the boundary line on the ground by boundary 
pillars, beacons or in any other similar way. They would thus be simply demar¬ 
cation commissioners. As a matter of fact, as I have said above, they are more 
often delimitators as well as demarcators. In all the boundary work I myself 
have been personally connected with, I have had to delimitate as well as demarcate. 
In the country where I had to demarcate, I found that where land was not of 
much value, or there were mountain ranges or other well defined physical 
features, and where we could see to considerable distances we could put beacons 
as much as eight and ten miles apart; in other places, where land was valuable, 
or where there was much disputed land, we had to put them at times within a 
few Hundred yards of each other. What is most important, I think, in demar¬ 
cation work is that the compass bearings should be taken of the pillars, as Colonel 
Trotter said. In his case, from the nature of the country, it was very hard to 
see much from any particular pillar, but in some countries it is possible to do so, 
and therefore wherever it is possible, careful bearings of each pillar should be 
taken, not less than two or three ; and those should be carefully recorded, together 
with the height of the pillars, which also is very useful in many cases. I do not 
mean the height of the actual pillar, but the height above sea level of the site 
where the pillar was erected. Colonel Trotter talked about demarcating a 
meridian. I never had any experience of that, but I had a great deal of 
experience in this last Afghan boundary commission of demarcating a straight 
line between two points, sometimes varying as much as 80 miles from point to 
point. We found the best way of doing that was by the heliograph, or rather by 
the aid of the heliograph ; but there again we generally had an open country and 
a clear atmosphere. We used to fix a heliograph on as far distant a point as we 
could on the straight line to be demarcated. The course of the straight line was 
ascertained by the theodolite, and the distant helio brought on to it by aid of 
heliographic signals. Having got the distant flash into position, we then demar¬ 
cated up to it by the simple process of aligning flags, to mark the sites of our 
pillars on to the far flash. Having got there, we checked our position by the 
theodolite by bearings of the points round and repeated the process. Sometimes 
a little error was found, but it was easily corrected before proceeding. Of course 
our progress varied according to circumstances, sometimes there were dust storms, 
and we could not do any work for days; sometimes we were only able to do a 
mile or so a day; but that was when circumstances were unfavourable. We 
found that we could lay down on the ground a straight line to a distance of 60 
and 80 miles to any accurately fixed point on a correct map with the greatest 
accuracy in that way. The Afghan commissioner had a simple method for 
checking my straight lines which was not altogether unsuccessful. He sent, or 
rather got me to send, a helio to the far point, marking the end of the line, say 
60 or 80 miles- away, which of course he could not see, but he nevertheless 
thought he could from the near end of the straight line. This method greatly 
assisted my woik, for after personally checking my straight line in this manner, 
he raised no further questions as to its accuracy. On one or two days I dis¬ 
covered that the_distant flash had never got into position, and waa not therefore 
