We are in the year 1852, at the headquarters of the Grand Trigonometrical Survey of India at Dehra Dun, 140 kilometres north-northeast of Delhi. Radhanath Sikdhar, the head of the Computing Office, bursts into the office of the Superintendent General, Sir Andrew Waugh, with some news they had been expecting for months. “Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain in the world!” The legend of Everest began at that moment.
In point of fact, the history books divide the credit for the “discovery” between Sikdhar and Michael Hennessy, Waugh’s young assistant. However, within the question that day appeared quite irrelevant. Even more so because the entire Survey staff had been working for some time on the measurement of the Himalayan peaks, and the final figures announced by the computing chief were in reality the result of long collective calculations. In the history of Himalayism, the event was an important date for another reason. The same fate that had befallen Mont Blanc some decades before now befell Everest. Basically speaking, before it could be climbed, the Himalayan colossus had to be literally “invented” with an imaginary framework, and then “discovered” by using a series of complex trigonometric calculations, which were essential to extract and isolate the mighty outline of Peak XV form the chaos of the surrounding peaks.
In reality the lengthy process which led to the “discovery” of Everest started at least fifty years before. It is, however, difficult to trace precisely its origin, because we also have to knot together different stories and interweaves events which are scattered and sometimes distant in space and time.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, about a hundred and fifty years after the establishment of the first English agencies at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, India was almost totally under British control. But the Raj, the British Empire needed to consolidate its power, keeping an eye on the international chessboard, with special attention to Russian attempts at expansion in central Asia–above all in the Hindu Kush, the Pamir and Tibet–which were still unknown and charted. It was no coincidence right in the center of the continent, the imperialist greed of the two providing the British colony with suitable cartographical support began later, at the turn of the next century, with the founding of the Grand Trigonometrical Survey.
In 1823 Colonel George Everest came onto the stage, as Superintendent of the Indian Trigonometrical Survey, and for many years, till 1843, he worked tirelessly on an ambitious project: a grid survey of the whole Raj. But his aims also included the mathematical calculation of the great meridian arc which rises from Cape Comorin at the southern end of the Indian peninsula, and crosses the Himalayan chain. The measurement of the latter was to make it possible to determine the mathematical geoids (the theoretical ideal sphere) on which to calculate the heights of the mountains. During their surveys the officials moved in almost all directions, and in the 1830s came within sight of the Himalayas. The English had for some time suspected that the orographic nodes of the great mountain chain contained some of the highest mountains on Earth. Already at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Colebrooke and Webb, the explores of the Ganges and its power was shortly afterwards to start that spy war which in Great Britain took the name of the Great Game, and which the Russians, more picturesquely, were to call the Sahdow Torunament.
It is clear that in such a setting the British stationed in India felt the need to have an in-depth knowledge of–and to properly control–the territory of the British Raj and bordering regions. The first triangulations in Indian territory date back to 1764 and were carried out in the Ganges Valley, but the ambitious plan of sources, spoke of very high mountains, some over five miles in height, higher than any peaks in the Andes. But for the moment the figure were still approximate. To find out more, they had to pinpoint the various peaks exactly on the map and, above all, give their exact elevations. There were many hurdles to overcome, because Tibet, Nepal, China, Sikkim and Bhutan barred the way to the topographers. The British were consequently obliged to carry out their measurements from trigonometrical stations quite distant from the actual Himalayan chain.
It was hard work in those conditions, even more because, due to the monsoons, the surveying teams could count on good visibility only from October to December. But this was not all: to obtain reliable data, the teams studying the Himalayas were forced to use particularly powerful theodolites, of enormous size and all very heavy; so heavy that it took a dozen men to transport one single piece of equipment.
In the autumn of 1847, Waugh was dealing with the measurement of Kangchenjunga, until then considered the highest mountain in the world. Behind the Himalayan giant, however, the Survey Superintendent observed with interest another icy peak which apparently was even higher: in topographic circles it was soon baptized with the name of “Peak B”. It was extremely difficult, at that moment, to hazard predictions, but from that sighting arose the first doubts about Kangchenjunga. Waugh decided to pursue the question and increase observations from other trigonometrical stations, which were nearer the Himalayan chain. His officers succeeded in advancing to within 170 kilometers of the mountains, and invariably–though bearing in mind the possibility of errors–all the measurements of “Peak B” indicated a height which was decidedly above that of Kangchenjunga. Subsequently the results of the various surveys were re-examined in the offices at Dehra Dun. The process of calculation lasted for a few years, because each datum obtained by the topographers had to be stripped of the effects of the refraction of light and the excessive distance of the peak from the survey stations. In the meantime, Michael Hennessy, one of Colonel Waugh’s assistants, invented a new naming system for the Himalayan Mountains, identifying the most important peaks with Roman numerals. Kanchenjunga was thus renamed Peak IX, and Peak B became Peak XV. Lastly, after much effort, came the final results which were made official only in 1856: 28,156 feet (8581.9), Peak IX and 29.002 feet (8839.8 ,meters), Peak XV. Very prudently, Waugh declared that the latter might prove to be the highest mountain in the world.
But the discovery was not yet complete. For a proper baptism, a number is not enough. The Himalayas giant needed a more dignified topynm. In Nepal no one had ever assigned a specific name to Peak XV, apart from that of the mountain chain which closes the Khumbu Valley. In Tibet, on the other hand, the inhabitants of the lands north of the Himalayas call the gigantic snowy peak, which stands out imposingly against the horizon, Chomolungma (Tschoumon- Lanckma, the Goddess Mother of the World). But for the British, the local place names were not enough. Waugh therefore suggested calling the Survey’s discovery after his predecessor, Sir George Everest, and some years later, in 1856, the Royal Geographical Society officially accepted the proposal. But the topographers’ calculations were only the first step in drawing closer to the mountain. In reality, at the end of the nineteenth century, very little was known about Everest. Until then the British had observed the Himalayan chain as from their balcony so to speak. They had succeeded in identifying the highest peaks through the lenses of their theodolites, but knew nothing of what stretched beyond the northern limits of the British colony. Beyond certain latitude, for westerners there was only a geographic vacuum. The topographic maps of the British Raj fade into uncertainty, betraying stretches of pure fantasy, or show large white patches. In short, the great mountains of central Asia still belonged to the world of the imagination, or at least the undefined, and the representation of the Himalayan world was only an interweaving of the hypotheses. In some aspects they seem to have gone back in time, to the period when explores started off in search of new lands and imaginary regions. In any case, the last years of the nineteenth century were to bring discoveries and surprises.
Excerpts: Everest- History of the Himalayn Giant by Robert Mantovani
