THE SCIENCE OF. FRONTIER DELIMITATION. 
227 
working at all, but the Afghan commissioner saw it, and we got on all right 
(laughter). 
The results of demarcation in the course of the boundary line laid down should 
be carefully marked on a map, as a map is the most valuable of all records—far 
more so than any agreements that can be drawn up in words. The map should 
be as accurate as possible, and the pillars and lines shown with the greatest accuracy 
on it. The map should be as large as possible. I agree with Colonel Trotter 
that small scale maps are most useful things, and that those engaged iu boundary 
work are bound to use them; but you should make the map as large as circum- 
stances will allow—from four to two miles to the inch or larger if possible—as 
large in fact as you can and the boundary line should be put down carefully on 
it. And, if I may say one thing more in conclusion, carefui triangulation should, as 
Colonel Trotter said, precede all mapping work. This, however, is a province 
that I will not go into because it is purely survey work, and I am looking, not from 
point of view a surveyor, but from that of a delimiter and demarcator (applause) 
Lieut.-Colonel J. C. Dalton, R.A.—It has never been my privilege to be 
told off to demarcate a frontier, but I have had something to do when I was in 
the Intelligence Department with the preliminary part which Captain McMahon 
rightly, I think, calls the delimitation of a frontier, and I think there is a good 
deal of responsibility attaching to those, whoever they may be, who have to supply 
to the demarcator the conditions which he has to follow out. Our custom was 
that we had first of all to consider every possible view of the question, the various 
existing maps, all the travellers 5 routes and so on ; we had to compile a map 
showing the frontiers of the country and get it as accurate as it was possible, to 
get any map of a country like West Africa where there are no proper trigo¬ 
nometrical surveys. We were then able to submit for the consideration of the 
Foreign Office or of the Colonial Office what we thought was a fair and proper 
boundary to be followed, and though we might think we had got a satisfactory 
boundary and that we had made out a fair case, we had to consider the maps 
made by the other country concerned, as well as our own, and from their point 
of view as well as from ours ; because, as Colonel Trotter very rightly said, the 
views of two bordering countries as to the tracing of the frontier may differ very 
much. If you compare the large French maps of that part of the world with 
ours, as I remember them some seven years ago, they are very different as regards 
the position of the countries and towns on the disputed frontier from what we 
shewed them to be on our maps—each country naturally making the best case 
for itself. Then, having suggested this boundary, the matter passed from us into 
other hands altogether to settle as to what line was to be demarcated. Generally 
speaking, a commission consisting of Foreign or Colonial Office officials on each 
side (possibly not including a scientific geographer at all) would meet at Paris or 
Berlin, or wherever the place was and, furnished with the maps supplied by both 
sides, they would, after some weeks or months of labour, come to a decision and 
give a line on which they agreed, which would be described in writing and by a 
rough map. They would then draw up the conditions which were to be handed 
over to the demarcator®. These conditions, when we got them back and saw 
them, did not always perhaps commend themselves to us as being the best con¬ 
ditions from a geographical point of view, or from the point of view from the 
surveyor or demarcator. We often found such a condition, as for example, that 
the line was to be drawn from one point straight to another point. That in 
itself may be easy to put on paper, but not an easy' matter for the demarcator 
when he gets on to the ground; it may take him across deep valleys and over 
mountain ranges and all sorts of inaccessible places. We always sought to get 
geographical features such as Colonel Trotter advocates: a well' known river, or 
