APPENDIX I
THE SURVEY
By Major H. T. MORSHEAD, D.S.O.
The personnel selected to form the Survey Detachment under my charge were as follows: Brevet-Major E. O. Wheeler, M.C., R.E., Mr. Lalbir Singh Thapa, Surveyors Gujjar Singh and Turubaz Khan, Photographer Abdul Jalil Khan, sixteen khalasis, etc.
The tasks allotted to the detachment were:—
(1) A general survey of the whole unmapped area covered by the Expedition, on a scale of 1 inch to 4 miles.
(2) A detailed survey of the immediate environs of Mount Everest on the scale of 1 inch to 1 mile.
(3) A complete revision of the existing ¼-inch map of Sikkim.
With the exception of a few rough notes and sketches by early travellers and missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, our first knowledge of the Southern portion of the Tibetan province of Tsang dated from the epoch of the Survey of India by trained native explorers in the middle of the nineteenth century. Thus, much of the area visited by the Expedition in 1921 was traversed by the explorer Hari Ram during the course of his two journeys in 1871–2 and 1885 respectively. At that time, however, foreign surveyors were not regarded with favour in Tibet; work could only be carried on surreptitiously, and the resulting map merely consisted of a small-scale route traverse which gave no indication of the surface features beyond the explorer's actual route.