Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 29.djvu/32

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20
Memorandum on the Survey of Kashmir.
[No. 1,
Memorandum on the Survey of Kashmir in progress under Captain T. G. Montgomerie, Bengal Engineers, 11’. R. G. S. and the Topo-

graphical Jlfap of the Valley and surrounding Mountains, with chart

of the Triangulation of the same executed in the Field Office and under the Superintendence of Lt.— Colonel A. Scott Waugh, F. R. S. .F. R. G. S. Surveyor General of India, .Dehra Dhoon, Illa-y 1859. .Read at a Meeting of the Asiatic Society on the 6th of July, 1859. By Major H. L. Thuillier, F. .R. G. 8'. Deputy Surveyor General of India.

In No. 263 of the Asiatic Journal for 1857 a paper was published by Lieutenant (now Captain) Montgomerie of the Bengal Engineers, 1st Assistant Great Trigonometrical Snrvey of India on the height of the Nanga Parbut and other snowy mountains of the Himalaya range adjacent to Kashmir; and it was therein stated that although not equal to Mount Everest (29,002 feet) still the Nanga Par- but (26,629 feet) was as much the king of the Northern Hima- layas as Mount Everest is the king of the Southern Himalaya. I have now the satisfaction, through the kind consideration of my friend Colonel “laugh, of laying before the Society, the actual results of the progress of this magnificent and unparalleled survey, up to a very recent date, and the maps now presented to the view of the meeting, together with the few details I am about to read, will prove better than anything else, the value and the character of the great national work which the Surveyor General of India is now rapidly carrying out to completion-a work which I believe will bear a comparison with any geographical operation undertaken in any country with which we are acquainted.

As the operations proceed, the labours of the Surveyors are rewarded with discoveries which certainly of late years have been but of infrequent occurrence, Another stupendous mountain has been measured and fixed by Captain Montgomerie, which perhaps is second in the world only to the one above alluded to, viz. Mount Everest, as measured by Col. Waugh in 18417. A snowy peak very nearly in the ray of Skardo from Sirinagur and distant N. E. about one hundred and fifty-eight miles from that capital, on the Kara Koram