EVEREST, MOUNT, the highest mountain in the world. It is a peak of the Himalayas situated in Nepal almost precisely on the intersection of the meridian 87 E. long. with the parallel 28 N. lat. Its elevation as at present determined by trigonometrical observation is 29,002 ft., but it is possible that further investigation into the value of refraction at such altitudes will result in placing the summit even higher. It has been confused with a peak to the west of it called Gaurisankar (by Schlagintweit), which is more than 5000 ft. lower; but the observations of Captain Wood from peaks near Khatmandu, in Nepal, and those of the same officer, and of Major Ryder, from the route between Lhasa and the sources of the Brahmaputra in 1904, have definitely fixed the relative position of the two mountain masses, and conclusively proved that there is no higher peak than Everest in the Himalayan system. The peak possesses no distinctive native name and has been called Everest after Sir George Everest (q.v.), who completed the trigonometrical survey of the Himalayas in 1841 and first fixed its position and altitude.
(T. H. H.*)
EVERETT, ALEXANDER HILL (1790-1847), American author and diplomatist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 19th of March 1790. He was the son of Rev. Oliver Everett (1753-1802), a Congregational minister in Boston, and the brother of Edward Everett. He graduated at Harvard in 1806, taking the highest honours of his year, though the youngest member of his class. He spent one year as a teacher in Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and then began the study of law in the office of John Quincy Adams. In 1809 Adams was appointed minister to Russia, and Everett accompanied him as his private secretary, remaining attached to the American legation in Russia until 1811. He was secretary of the American legation at The Hague in 1815-1816, and chargé d’affaires there from 1818 to 1824. From 1825 to 1829, during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, he was the United States minister to Spain. At that time Spain recognized none of the governments established by her revolted colonies, and Everett became the medium of all communications between the Spanish government and the several nations of Spanish origin which had been established, by successful revolutions, on the other side of the ocean. Everett was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1830-1835, was president of Jefferson College in Louisiana in 1842-1844, and was appointed commissioner of the United States to China in 1845, but did not go to that country until the following year, and died on the 29th of May 1847 at Canton, China. Everett, however, is known rather as a man of letters than as a diplomat. In addition to numerous articles, published chiefly in the North American Review, of which he was the editor from 1829 to 1835, he wrote: Europe, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Principal Powers, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects (1822), which attracted considerable attention in Europe and was translated into German, French and Spanish; New Ideas on Population (1822); America, or a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Several Powers of the Western Continent, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects (1827), which was translated into several European languages; a volume of Poems (1845); and Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (first series, 1845; second series, 1847).
EVERETT, CHARLES CARROLL (1829-1900), American divine and philosopher, was born on the 19th of June 1829, at Brunswick, Maine. He studied at Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1850, after which he proceeded to Berlin. Subsequently he took a degree in divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. From 1859 to 1869 he was pastor of the Independent Congregational (Unitarian) church at Bangor, Maine. This charge he resigned to take the Bussey professorship of theology at Harvard University, and, in 1878, became dean of the faculty of theology. Interested in a variety of subjects, he devoted himself chiefly to the philosophy of religion, and published The Science of Thought (Boston, 1869; revised 1891). He also wrote Fichte’s Science of Knowledge (1884); Poetry, Comedy and Duty (1888); Religions before Christianity (1883); Ethics for Young People (1891); The Gospel of Paul (1892). He died at Cambridge on the 16th of October 1900.
EVERETT, EDWARD (1794-1865), American statesman and orator, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on the 11th of April 1794. He was the son of Rev. Oliver Everett and the brother of Alexander Hill Everett (q.v.). His father died in 1802, and his mother removed to Boston with her family after her husband’s death. At seventeen Edward Everett graduated from Harvard College, taking first honours in his class. While at college he was the chief editor of The Lyceum, the earliest in the series of college journals published at the American Cambridge. His earlier predilections were for the study of law, but the advice of Joseph Stevens Buckminster, a distinguished preacher in Boston, led him to prepare for the pulpit, and as a preacher he at once distinguished himself. He was called to the ministry of the Brattle Street church (Unitarian) in Boston before he was twenty years old. His sermons attracted wide attention in that community, and he gained a considerable reputation as a theologian and a controversialist by his publication in 1814 of a volume entitled Defence of Christianity, written in answer to a work, The Grounds of Christianity Examined (1813), by George Bethune English (1787-1828), an adventurer, who, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was in turn a student of law and of theology, an editor of a newspaper, and a soldier of fortune in Egypt. Everett’s tastes, however, were then, as always, those of a scholar; and in 1815, after a service of little more than a year in the pulpit, he resigned his charge to accept a professorship of Greek literature in Harvard College.
After nearly five years spent in Europe in preparation, he entered with enthusiasm on his duties, and, for five years more, gave a vigorous impulse, not only to the study of Greek, but to all the work of the college. In January 1820 he assumed the charge of the North American Review, which now became a quarterly; and he was indefatigable during the four years of his editorship in contributing on a great variety of subjects. From 1825 to 1835 he was a member of the National House of Representatives, supporting generally the administration of President J.Q. Adams and opposing that of Jackson, which succeeded it. He bore a part in almost every important debate, and was a member of the committee of foreign affairs during the whole time of his service in Congress. Everett was a member of nearly all the most important select committees, such as those on the Indian relations of the state of Georgia, the Apportionment Bill, and the Bank of the United States, and drew the report either of the majority or the minority. The report on the congress of Panama, the leading measure of the first session of the Nineteenth Congress, was drawn up by Everett, although he was the youngest member of the committee and had just entered Congress. He led the unsuccessful opposition to the Indian policy of General Jackson (the removal of the Cherokee and other Indians, without their consent, from lands guaranteed to them by treaty).
In 1835 he was elected governor of Massachusetts. He brought to the duties of the office the untiring diligence which was the characteristic of his public life. We can only allude to a few of the measures which received his efficient support, e.g. the establishment of the board of education (the first of such boards in the United States), the scientific surveys of the state (the first of such public surveys), the criminal law commission, and the preservation of a sound currency during the panic of 1837.