by John Keay
While it was undergoing the necessary repairs at the hands of the village cobbler, Everest ordered his ‘carriage-cattle’ to be swum across the flood. Fortunately they were not actually cattle, ox-carts being useless in roadless jungle, but a species he deemed ‘more at home in the water than any other quadruped’, namely elephants. As he also noted, elephants are extraordinarily sagacious. The Survey’s beasts duly swayed to the bank, took a long look at the rocks and the raging waters, assessed the mix of caresses and curses on offer, and opted to stay dry. ‘Probably it was fortunate,’ Everest adds, ‘for these powerful animals … are, from the size of their limbs, in need of what sailors term sea-room, and in a river like the Kistna … were very liable to receive some serious injury.’
This reverse meant a change of plan. Dr Henry Voysey, one of Everest’s two British companions and the Survey’s geologist-cum-physician, was left on the north bank with the main party plus elephants, horses, tents and baggage. Meanwhile Everest and a dozen men, balancing the Survey’s cumbersome theodolite between them, crossed to the other side. Three trips had to be made; and since the coracle had to undergo repairs after each, it took most of the day. Then, deceived by the visibility into thinking it was only a couple of miles away, Everest immediately set out for his next observation post.
The couple of miles turned out to be twelve. They included both jungle work and rock-climbing. By the time the hill of Sarangapalle was reached it was dusk, and big black clouds, aflicker with lightning, were piling up overhead. ‘At last,’ noted Everest, ‘when all their batteries were in order, a tremendous crash of thunder burst forth, and, as if all heaven were converted into one vast shower-bath, the vertical rain poured down in large round drops upon the devoted spot of Sarangapullee.’
Tentless in the deluge, Everest and his men bent branches to make bivouacs. His own was improved by a bedstead and an umbrella, between which he slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted, oblivious alike of his squelching tweeds, puddled bedding and benighted followers. ‘These evils might have been borne without any ill effects,’ he insists, ‘but for other circumstances of more serious consequence.’
The natives of India, according to Everest, ‘with their minds bowed down under the incubus of superstition’, attributed all fevers to witchcraft, and ignored natural causes. He, on the other hand, while amused by the idleness and absurdity of these doctrines, knew better. Malaria and ‘typhus’ fevers were alike the result of ‘a poisonous influence in the air’ which emanated from moist and ‘unwholesome’ soils. Under the impression that he was contributing to medical research, he examined the different schists and shales, the crystalline sandstone of Sarangapalle, the blue limestones of the Kistna and the porous sandstone of the Godavari in minute detail. These, he believed, were the ‘other circumstances’ which would prove of such serious consequence for his survey.
At the time most of his contemporaries shared these medical views. But, in a nice case of geographical coincidence, Hyderabad would host a further attempt to discover the natural causes of malaria. Seventy years later in a house in Begampet, now a suburb of Hyderabad city, Surgeon Ronald Ross would experiment on the insects of the Kistna-Godavari jungles and trace the malaria parasite to the anopheles mosquito. Everest’s ideas of ‘malarial vapours’ would thereby be exposed as every bit as idle and absurd as those of his followers.
After observing from Sarangapalle, he recrossed the Kistna and rejoined his camp to head north towards the Godavari. On the way he conducted observations to prominent hills like that to which he had earlier sent his signalmen. The survey on which he was engaged was what was known as a ‘secondary triangulation’. It was intended to cover all the country between the Kistna and the Godavari with a network of imaginary triangles whose sides connected intervisible observation posts.
Triangulation means simply ‘triangle-ing’, or conceiving three mutually visible reference points, usually on prominent hills or buildings, as the corners of a triangle. Knowing the exact distance between two of these points, and then measuring at each the angles made by their connecting sight-line with those to the third point, the distance and position of the third point can be established by trigonometry. One of the newly determined sides of this triangle then becomes the base for a second triangle embracing a new reference point whose position is determined in the same way. Another triangle is thus completed and one of its sides becomes the base for a third, And so on. A web, or chain, of triangles results; and Everest’s job was to extend this web of triangulation over the whole Kistna-Godavari region.
The positions of these vital reference points could have been established by careful observation of the stars. But as Everest would repeatedly emphasise, astronomical observations only gave the desired degree of accuracy if conducted over many months, preferably years, from well-equipped and professionally-manned observatories. Constructing and operating such observatories across a subcontinent was out of the question; and for reasons that were only partly understood at the time, observatories seemed to be affected by their surroundings. Better and simpler was the geometrical approach of triangulation. It was not quicker. The Great Trigonometrical Survey had taken the field twenty years before Everest became involved and would not complete its work until twenty years after he left. Nor was it necessarily cheaper. As Everest was about to discover, in terms of lives lost and rupees spent the cost would exceed that of many contemporary Indian wars. But triangulation was well-tried, accurate to the point of mathematical certainty, and so more acceptable to the scientific world.
Such a survey still depended on the occasional astronomical observation in order to locate and orientate its triangles in terms of the earth’s grid of latitude and longitude. It also depended on the occasional measurement along the ground. Known as a ‘base-line’, this was needed to get the triangulation going in the first place by establishing the distance between the first two points. It was also a useful way of verifying the accuracy of a protracted triangulation, since the distance between any two points as established by triangulation could be checked by another actual measurement on the ground.
In the case of a ‘secondary triangulation’ like Everest’s between the Kistna and Godavari, base-line measurements and astronomical observations were not necessary. Everest’s job was to connect trig stations along the east coast (whose relative positions had already been established by the more elaborate methods and instruments of primary triangulation) with those of another chain of even more exacting primary triangulation about a hundred miles inland to the west.
The latter roughly followed the 78-degree meridian (or north – south line of longitude) and consisted of a continuous chain of triangles which had been carried from Cape Comorin at the tip of the Indian peninsula as far north as Hyderabad, a distance of about seven hundred miles. Already this ‘series’ was known as the Great Arc of the Meridian. As well as providing the spine on which the whole skeleton of the Great Trigonometrical Survey depended, it was the aspect of the Survey’s work which most appealed to George Everest. In fact his present assignment he saw mainly as a way of proving that he was pre-eminently qualified to succeed Colonel Lambton as the grand master of the Great Arc.
To one like Everest who happened to have been baptised (and so probably born) in the London parish of Greenwich, meridians must early have meant something. Greenwich had been the site of England’s Royal Observatory since the seventeenth century. British navigators and surveyors regarded the Greenwich meridian, or ‘mid-day’ line (because at any point along a north – south meridian the sun reaches its zenith at the same time), as the zero from which they calculated all longitudinal distances and from which on maps and charts they extended the graticule, or grid, of the globe’s 360 degrees of longitude. Later in the nineteenth century this British convention would win international approval. Greenwich Mean Time would become established as a world standard and the Greenwich meridian would be universally recognised as o degrees longitude. It became, in fact, the north –
south equivalent of the east – west equator at o degrees latitude.
Everest therefore knew about meridians from childhood and may well have been intrigued by the problems of determining them. Later, at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, he had studied the mathematics, mechanics and measuring techniques essential for an officer joining the artillery. But his family background was not scientific, his father being a solicitor; and apart from some basic survey work in Java when British forces had invaded and occupied that island during the Napoleonic wars, his career had thus far differed little from that of other army officers in India. Appointment to the Great Trigonometrical Survey was his big opportunity. Neither mutiny, flood nor fever was going to impede his determination to excel.
Returning from the soaking at Sarangapalle, Everest revisited his first observation post, erected his theodolite – the instrument used for measuring the angles between sight-lines – and scanned the distant ridge of Panch Pandol through its telescope. Nothing had been heard of his signalmen for three weeks; nor was there now any sign of their signals. But a few days later a gap was noticed in the dark vegetation which covered the ridge. Day by day it was seen to grow into two sizeable clearings. ‘After a fortnight’s further waiting I had sufficient daylight behind [the clearings] to distinguish the colours of the Great Trigonometrical Survey flying on the one spot and a signal-marker on the other.’ Bearings could now be taken to ascertain the angle between the sight-line to this new marker and that to another marker at an already established observation post.
Measuring such angles was the essence of trigonometrical survey work. Another triangle was thus completed and, once the sight-line to Panch Pandol had been calculated, it could serve as the base for the next triangle. The whole party then moved on towards the ridge to begin their observations anew and, in the case of the impatient Everest, to seek some explanation for his signalmen’s unconscionable delay in reaching Panch Pandol.
The explanation was soon obvious. Almost immediately the trail plunged into the formidable jungle region which now comprises the Pakhal and Eturnagaram game sanctuaries. The forests were of ebony and teak, and the trees ‘seventy, eighty, and even ninety feet high, thickly set with underwood, and infested with large tigers and boa constrictors’. As the Survey gingerly hacked its way forward, Everest began to think more kindly of his signalmen. ‘How … without water or provisions, and with the jungle fever staring them in the face, they could have wandered through such a wilderness until they selected the most commanding points for a station, utterly, I confess, surpasses my comprehension.’ His comprehension would soon again be found wanting. The scene which greeted him on arrival was even more impressive.
When I saw the dreadful wilderness by which I was surrounded; when I saw how, by means of conciliating treatment and prompt payment, my people had managed to collect a sufficient body of hatchet-men to clear away every tree which in the least obstructed the horizon over a surface of nearly a square mile; and when [I saw how] the gigantic branches of these were cut off and cleared away leaving only the trunks as trophies, – then – then I learned to appreciate the excellent management of Colonel Lambton who had been enabled to train up so faithful a body of men.
Then, somewhat incidentally, he also ‘learned how to value the natives of southern India’. But it was a lesson that was easily forgotten. Giving credit to subordinates would not come naturally to George Everest. From Panch Pandol he despatched his advance party to a hill site even deeper in the jungle and near the banks of the Godavari. Again the days slipped by with no sign of them; again Everest fretted and fumed. He sent out a second party to look for them, then a third. Finally he despatched his chief sub-assistant Joseph Olliver, who with Dr Voysey made up his entire British staff.
Olliver eventually reached the hill and hoisted the flag; but his news was not good. Most of the previous signalmen had succumbed to fever; some were near death. Should the whole survey party proceed to Yellapuram (the village after which the new site was named) the risks would be immense. Everest was unimpressed. Desperate to complete his assignment and so win the approval of Colonel Lambton, he reckoned that all risks were warranted.
The trail from Panch Pandol to Yellapuram wound through ‘the wildest and thickest forest that I had ever invaded’. It took three days; but at least the weather stayed fine and the vegetation was at its most spectacular after the recent rains. Voysey and Everest rejoiced as they rode, then quipped as they climbed. At last the canopy thinned and, seeing again the sky and the summit, both men spontaneously roared a favourite Shakespearian couplet:
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain’s top.
Everest, however, misquoted; and neither man seems to have been aware of Romeo’s next and more cautionary line: ‘I must be gone and live, or stay and die.’
After they dismounted at Yellapuram, the oppressive silence of the jungle brought to Everest’s mind a wilderness scene from the Arabian Nights. There was a spectacular view up the Godavari and, beside and beyond it, three excellent heights from which to complete his survey. Congratulating himself that ‘the end of my toilsome and laborious task seemed now to be within my grasp’, he immediately sent out flag parties.
But no sooner had jocund day forsaken the misty mountain’s top than fever struck. That evening Everest went down with what he called a violent typhus, the result of ‘my day’s ride through a powerful sun and over a soil teeming with vapour and malaria’. Dr Voysey succumbed soon after. Within five days most of their followers, including escort, signalmen, porters, mahouts and runners, nearly 150 in all, were also prostrated.
It seemed indeed as if at last the genius of the jungle had risen in his wrath to chastise the hardihood of those men who had dared to violate the sanctity of his chosen haunt. All hope of completing the work this season being now at an end, it remained only to proceed with as much expedition as possible towards Hyderabad … [and] to return, baffled and crippled, through an uninterrupted distance of nearly two hundred miles.
Dr Voysey took to his palanquin. Everest, lacking such a conveyance, had a stretcher made. For porters they looked not to their prostrate followers but to the retinue of ‘a rebellious chief who aided my progress most manfully’. It took three weeks for them to reach Hyderabad, throughout which time ‘the jungle fever pursued my party like a nest of irritated bees’.
When news of the disaster reached the city, all available carts, palanquins, elephants and camels were commandeered and sent out to bring home the sick. Most were indeed retrieved but, out of the total of 150, fifteen had died on the road and not one had escaped unscathed. The survivors, wrote a shaken Everest, ‘bore little resemblance to human beings, but seemed like a crowd of corpses recently torn from the grave’.
So ended Lieutenant George Everest’s first season in the employ of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. A long convalescence was necessary; it was anyway October, by which month the visibility had lost its champagne clarity. For Everest the experience had been an eye-opener. He recalled it with a mixture of horror and naivety which is seldom found in his other writings. It was not exceptional; greater catastrophes would overtake the Survey and many more lives would be lost. But it was a testing induction for a novice, and it was an ominous overture to an illustrious but controversial career.
Dr Voysey would never fully recover. Though he soldiered on, he would die four years later from a recurrence of the Yellapuram malaria. Everest, too, would never regain what he calls ‘the full vigour of youth’. In the following year he returned to Yellapuram to complete his observations but again succumbed to a ‘violent attack of jungle fever’. The work was in fact completed by his dependable assistant Joseph Olliver. Meanwhile Everest, ‘deeming it unwise to sacrifice myself for an unimportant object’, took a year’s sick leave and sailed to the Cape of Good Hope to convalesce. He would return to duty in 1822 but within a year was racked by fevers both old and new. Gruesome complications
ensued which would temporarily reduce him to a cripple. In 1825, aged thirty-five, he would again sail away on sick leave, this time to England. He would not return to India for five years.
Critical for Everest, the period from 1820 to 1830 would prove even more critical for what he proclaimed to officials in London to be ‘the greatest scientific undertaking of the kind that has ever been attempted’. By this he meant not the ambitious map-making programme of the Survey of India, nor even the rigorous methods of its Great Trigonometrical Survey, but the latter’s supreme expression, the Great Indian Arc of the Meridian.
As his birthplace of Greenwich was to meridians, so George Everest would become to the Arc. The two became inseparable. The Arc would be his life’s work, his dearest attachment, his near-fatal indulgence; and while he lived, his name would be synonymous with it. Yet it was not his brain-child, nor in large part his achievement – those honours belong to the less articulate genius of William Lambton. Nor, when Everest died, would he long be remembered for the Arc. Instead, his name was purloined for a peak.
It was not in his nature to decline the lasting fame of having his name ‘placed a little nearer the stars than that of any other’. Even the controversy which the naming of Mount Everest would prompt is in character. On the other hand, his truculent spirit must surely be turning in its grave at being remembered only for the mountain and not for the measurement. Other than as convenient trig stations, mountains barely featured in his life. He saw the Himalayas only towards the end of his career and he hailed them then only as a fitting conclusion to the Great Arc. There is nothing to suggest that he was particularly curious as to their height.
Yet there was a connection between the Arc and the Himalayas, and there was a logic in naming the earth’s greatest protuberance for Everest. For the Great Arc would solve the mystery of the mountains. The painstaking measurement of a meridian up through India’s burning immensity would make possible the measurement of the ice-capped Himalayas. This is the story of both, of the Arc and of the mountains.