The Great Arc (18 page)

‘For the next four years,’ continues Phillimore, ‘[Waugh] was discussing refraction coefficients and the datum zero height which had to await tidal observations at Karachi.’ Then ‘as a final check he wrote for the old records of Charles Crawford and William Webb.’ It was not, therefore, until March 1856 that Waugh at last took up his pen and, in a letter consisting of fourteen numbered and neatly written paragraphs, summarised his findings.

The letter, ‘No 29B’, might be ‘made use of’ but it was not for publication. The results were still provisional; there was much revision yet to be undertaken. It was addressed simply to Captain Thuillier, his Deputy Surveyor-General in Calcutta. But its contents were such that they quickly became common knowledge. For after a four-paragraph preamble, Waugh at last directed his attention to Peak XV.

5. We have for some years known that this mountain is higher than any hitherto measured in India and most probably it is the highest in the whole world.

6. I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor Colonel Sir Geo. Everest to assign to every geographical object its true local or native appellation. I have always scrupulously adhered to this rule as I have in fact to all other principles laid down by that eminent geodesist.

7. But here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover, whose native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepal and to approach close to this stupendous snowy mass.

8. In the meantime the privilege as well as the duty devolves on me to assign to this lofty pinnacle of our globe a name whereby it may be known among geographers and become a household word among civilized nations.

9. In virtue of this privilege, in testimony of my affectionate respect for a revered chief, in conformity with what I believe to be the wish of all the members of the scientific department over which I have the honour to preside, and to perpetuate the memory of that illustrious master of accurate geographical research, I have determined to name this noble peak of the Himalayas Mont [
sic
] Everest.

10. The final values of the co-ordinates of geographical position for this mountain are as follows, viz –

MONT EVEREST OR HIMALAYA PEAK XV

As intended, Thuillier duly conveyed this information to members of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. They approved Waugh’s findings although not the new name. The latter, which Waugh himself quickly changed from ‘Mont Everest’ to ‘Mount Everest’, was however endorsed in London by the Secretary of State for India and by the Royal Geographical Society.

Doubts, though, remained. For one thing, it was not certain
that the new peak was in fact the highest. By the time Waugh composed his letter, British India had devoured the lands which today comprise Pakistan. Leafy branches of triangulation were spreading rapidly west and north-west, particularly into the newly created state of Kashmir, whose uncertain mountain borders marched with those of China and several central Asian kingdoms. The latter were rapidly succumbing to Russian influence, and with the British paranoid about Tsarist designs on their Indian empire, the mapping of Kashmir had been given the highest priority. In 1856, even as Thuillier was conveying Waugh’s news of Mount Everest to the Asiatic Society, a party of shivering surveyors was encamped on Haramukh, the mountain which presides over the Kashmir valley. From there they were taking angles to a new cluster of peaks, distant 140 miles and evidently of exceptional magnitude.

The range in question, detached from the chain of the Great Himalaya and just to the north of its western bastion (the 26,660-foot Nanga Parbat), was said to be called the Karakoram. Captain Montgomerie, the man in charge of the Kashmir survey, therefore numbered its peaks with the prefix ‘K’ and, in a small sketch, clearly delineated the first two in the new series. For his ‘K1’ a local name was later found – Masherbrum. ‘K2’, a sharper and more elusive peak, remained anonymous although not ignored. The possibility that it might exceed Mount Everest was clear in 1856 and led to a succession of observations in 1857, then some hasty computation in 1858. Montgomerie, unlike Waugh, was keen to dispose of the matter, although probably disappointed by the result. At 28,287 feet (later revised to 28,168), K2 was slightly higher than Kangchenjunga but well short of Mount Everest.

Other challengers would also be seen off. The altitude of Mount Everest has since been often adjusted but seldom to below 29,000 feet. At either 29,028 or 29,141, it reigns supreme. But this supremacy only fuelled another debate: why should it be called ‘Mount Everest’? ‘K2’, for instance, remains
‘K2’. Names likes ‘Keychu’ and ‘Keytu’ would be exposed as no more than local renderings of Montgomerie’s designation; other names, including ‘Mount Waugh’ (after the Surveyor-General), ‘Mount Albert’ (after Queen Victoria’s consort), ‘Mount Montgomerie’ (after its ‘discoverer’) and ‘Mount Godwin-Austen’ (after the surveyor who first actually penetrated the Karakoram), have failed to win acceptance. No doubt the government of India or that of Pakistan would happily adopt a new name for the peak but, while control of Kashmir continues to be disputed, K2 is likely to remain a nameless orphan.

The case for scrapping ‘Mount Everest’ rested on the suspicion, anticipated by Waugh, that there might be a local name for it which access to Nepal would reveal. Brian Hodgson, an eminent Buddhist scholar who had resided at Kathmandu for some years, immediately came up with ‘Devadhanga’ as the Nepali designation. The Asiatic Society, deferring to Hodgson’s scholarship and reflecting the hostility which many in British India still felt for George Everest, agreed. But Waugh objected. He convened a committee which declared Devadhanga ‘indefinite and unacceptable’. Although enshrined in Nepali legend, it apparently applied to several peaks. In the past such imprecision had scarcely deterred adoption of a name; but the fact that XV was the world’s highest, that Waugh had already named it, and that ‘Mount Everest’ was indeed rapidly becoming ‘a household word among civilized nations’ militated against change.

So did the turmoil which swept northern India in 1857. Within a year of Waugh’s announcement, the British were fighting for the existence of their Raj. In the context of what they insisted was just an ‘Indian Mutiny’ but which Indians regard as a great national rebellion, the quibbling over the name of a mountain abruptly ceased.

The Great Rebellion, though sparked by a mutiny of Indian troops, spread across a national landscape parched by years of
withering contempt for the sensibilities and customs of India’s people. It would be unfair to claim that the Rebellion, like the measurement of Mount Everest, stemmed from the activities of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. But surveyors had undoubtedly fuelled both the British sense of superiority and the Indian sense of grievance. ‘Bars’ and ‘chains’ of invisible triangulation looked and sounded a lot like political strangulation. Not unwittingly the Survey had furnished the paradigm and encouraged the mind-set of an autocratic and unresponsive imperialism. Additionally, by razing whole villages, appropriating sacred hills, exhausting local supplies, antagonising protective husbands and facilitating the assessment of the dreaded land revenue, the surveyors had probably done as much to advertise the realities of British rule and so alienate grassroots opinion as had any branch of the administration. Back in the early 1800s, men like Mackenzie and Lambton had respected and even admired India’s rich cultural traditions. But to Everest and his generation devotional customs and immemorial lore were just evidence of ‘the suspicious native mind’. Tiptoeing round local sensibilities, whether Indian or British, was not an art which George Everest had ever recognised.

With the British in India otherwise engaged, ‘Mount Everest’ won international recognition. When the name was again questioned, the logic of sticking with it was stronger than ever. In the early twentieth century the great Swedish explorer Sven Hedin had come up with a long Tibetan name for the mountain. Rendered in various different spellings, ‘Cha-mo-lung-ma’ was also, like Devadhanga, rejected on the grounds that it was applicable to the whole Everest region rather than to a particular peak. Still longer Tibetan names like
Mi-thik Dgu-thik Bya-phur Long-nga
(which one writer translates as ‘You cannot see the summit from near it, but you can see the summit from nine directions, and a bird which flies as high as the summit goes blind’) are undoubtedly more specific. But they scarcely trip off the tongue, nor do they endear themselves
to cartographers working within the cramped confines of a small-scale map. ‘Mount Everest’, on the other hand, universally mispronounced and long since disassociated from its contentious namesake, has a ring of permanence, an aura of assurance.

Strangely, the one person who might have entered into this debate with intriguing effect held his peace. It was not out of modesty. George Everest, after declining one order of knighthood because he thought it not grand enough, had in 1861 become Sir George Everest, Companion of the Bath. In a typically overblown disclaimer he had once confessed to being ‘by no means disposed to be very humble, or to play the courtier, or to kiss the rod that chastises me’. Yet of his reaction to having the world’s highest mountain named in his honour there is no record at all. Perhaps he rightly judged that any intervention on his part might be counter-productive.

For a man who had been far from well for the past twenty years, Everest’s homecoming had had a dramatic effect. Reaching England in 1844, he settled first in the Leicestershire countryside, where he was soon riding with the local hunt, and then in London. In 1845 he visited the USA, and in the following year, back in London, he married. He was then fifty-five. To Everest, as to Lambton, the joys of family life constituted a last great discovery. Seemingly his bride shared this sense of achievement. Although Emma Wing was less than half his age, she proved to be a devoted wife who over the next ten years bore him six children.

The last glimpse of the great man, as later recollected by his eldest surviving son, reveals a contented old gentleman, friendly with the explorer David Livingstone, the chemist Michael Faraday and other notable contemporaries. Adopting that leonine beard and hairstyle, he enjoyed the plaudits of the scientific societies but was just as content playing the Victorian father. The day began with family prayers ‘at which the servants attended’. ‘My father was a firm believer in God as every
Freemason ought to be.’ There might follow a few hours’ work, perhaps on a mouth-watering paper like that ‘On Instruments and Observations for Longitude for Travellers on Land’ (published in 1859), and then a lecture at the Royal Institution.

Most days there was also time for a bit of parental instruction. With his offspring perched on high stools at a long deal table, he introduced them to the mysteries of elementary arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and ‘learning something about logarithms’. Perhaps, too, there were tales about the tigers he had never met and the mountain he had never seen. He died in London in 1866, aged seventy-six, and was buried in Hove, near Brighton.

No statue has ever been erected in his memory. George Everest, like William Lambton and like their Great Arc, was soon forgotten. But where history is oblivious, geography is tenacious. By having, in the words of Waugh’s successor as Surveyor-General, ‘placed his name just a little nearer the stars than that of any other lover of the eternal glory of the mountains’, the maps continue to acknowledge their debt to the ever-restless genius of George Everest.