Free The Great Arc by John Keay Page A

baronial chief. Clearly in India as elsewhere the planting of flags had territorial connotations. Lambton’s willingness to adopt whatever flag was locally acceptable made little difference. Eventually the Survey would opt for other sighting marks of a less contentious nature, like a sturdy sapling or a basket atop a pole.
    Lambton’s men beat a speedy retreat from Narnicul only to be denied again at the next droog. This time the reason given was ‘that, as it commanded a view of [the poligar’s] habitation, his women might be exposed to view’. Such accusations of voyeurism would be another recurrent problem. Elevations invariably commanded the privacy of someone’s home, and it was soon common knowledge that the survey’s instruments had the ability to magnify distant objects, persons or parts of persons to very intimate effect. Worse still, these monstrous machines not only magnified the object but inverted it. Respectable wives and daughters going about their domestic duties were being upended by perfect strangers with lascivious intent; cherished temples were being casually overturned; and if a well ran dry, it must be because the same troublemakers had tipped it upside down. Nor was it much good these injured people directing Lambton’s men to someless objectionable vantage point well out of harm’s and harems’ way. ‘I must place myself on such hills as will descry preceding and succeeding points,’ expostulated one of his assistants, ‘and these in a hilly tract like this are generally the highest and almost everywhere the stronghold of a poligar.’
    The local people were unimpressed; and as for explanations about making maps or measuring the earth, what did these strangers take them for? Maps were made by pacing the roads with pen and paper, not by sitting on hills and tinkering with machines. Besides, everyone knew that if you needed to travel somewhere you found a man who knew the way. Why, even the surveyors were always asking for directions.
    Coincidentally, a member of the Madras government’s finance committee was reported to have made exactly the same point. ‘If any traveller wishes to proceed to Seringapatam [Srirangapatnam], he need only say so to his head palanquin bearer, and he vouched that he would find his way to that place without having recourse to Lambton’s map.’ The speaker was objecting to the heavy expenditure involved in a trigonometrical survey. Luckily others, including the Governor of Madras, considered the enterprise ‘a great national undertaking’. Admittedly the Governor was one of those who were slightly mystified by its geodetic significance; but scientific opinion was evidently impressed and, if the reputation for enlightened government of British India, and Madras in particular, might thereby be advanced, so be it.
    Lambton was nevertheless expected to operate on what Robert Colebrooke, with his flotilla of boats and his circus of marquees, elephants and camels, would have considered a wretched shoestring. ‘Tents:’ ran Lambton’s list of sanctioned equipment, ‘1 Marquee, 2 Private, 1 Necessary, 1 Observatory.’ The ‘Marquee’ was both his office and living quarters; the two ‘Private’ were needed for storing baggage; the ‘Necessary’ was for his commode – very necessary given the incidence of dysentery; and the ‘Observatory’ was for his GreatTheodolite. There were no tents at all for his men, who presumably sheltered beneath whatever they could rig up by way of a canopy.
    Precisely how many men were attached to the Survey in its early days is uncertain. For carriage purposes Lambton was initially allowed bullock carts and porters sufficient for the tents and instruments plus two messengers, eight lascars, two water-carriers, a carpenter, a blacksmith and an interpreter. This complement, perhaps forty in total, would soon double. It was found, for instance, that moving a delicate instrument like the Great Theodolite by bullock cart was not