THE PRIMARY TRIANGULATION OF SARAWAK

Abstract

Historical.—When my predecessor, Mr N. A. Middlemas, was seconded from the Survey Department of Malaya in 1925, the survey framework of the State was technically negligible.     

THE TRAINING OF AFRICANS FOR SURVEY IN NORTHERN RHODESIA

Abstract

Prior to the year 1931 there was no systematic training of Africans for land survey work in Northern Rhodesia, and those natives then in the employ of the Survey Department as assistants to the European surveyors in the field were no more than “capitaos”. Asurveyor, after his arrival in the colony, usually had to find his own native assistant, or chainman, and any native who appeared to have a commanding manner with his fellows, and who was clean and respectful, was eligible for the position. Preference in some cases was usually given to natives who had completed service in the native regiment or police, for their early training had taught them to obey orders, to conduct themselves well, and to control other natives.     

DEPARTMENTAL AIR PHOTOGRAPHY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The article which follows is an attempt to estimate the present position of Aerial Photography in the Survey Department of Nigeria after thirteen months experience of departmental working. The success of the project is now almost a certainty but it is evident that it could not have been undertaken at all without the presence of the H.Q. of a fairly large Airways Corporation in the Colony.     

RECOLLECTIONS OF A SURVEY OFFICER IN INDIA

Abstract

To one brought up in Switzerland the call of mountains had always been irresistible, so in 1908 I counted myself lucky in being posted for my first field season in the Survey of India to the party which was that year to plane-table the Nilgiri Hills of the Madras Presidency. The ultimate goal was the Himalaya, not to be achieved for many years, and I well remember my feelings of acute jealousy when Kenneth Mason succeeded in joining the Kashmir party a year or two later. Still, there were compensations even in South India. The party moved southwards into Travancore the following year, and it fell to my lot to tackle a mysterious blank marked on the quarter-inch “Atlas” sheets of India “High waving mountains covered with impenetrable forests and overrun by wild beasts”. This was the catchment area of the Periyar Dam constructed some seventeen years previously by Col. Pennycuick, R.E. (if I remember rightly), for the purpose of diverting some of the monsoon rainfall of the Western Ghats to the dry Tinnevelly side of the watershed. The dam had formed a narrow many-armed lake running 21 miles into the “waving” mountains and ending at the fringe of the “impenetrable forest”. To that extent the communications problem was solved: by the use of dugouts. These the younger generation of the small jungle tribe living on the lake border had learnt to make and to paddle. I spent two interesting if lonely seasons there, first triangulating alone and then plane-tabling with a “camp” of eight Indian surveyors. The lake area was open country, if you can call 10-foot elephant grass open. Against Forest Department orders I more than once set a match to the grass in the evening and found several square miles clear for work by next morning. This simplified getting about, but the charred grass stalks made one black from head to foot. Apart from my own men I met no one whose language I could speak during those two seasons except some tea-planters from Pirmed on one occasion, my “O.C. Party”, Sackville Hamilton, who came to inspect, and Stoehr of the Sapper batch above me who came to shoot an elephant.     

USE OF SURVEY SECTIONS IN OPERATIONS

Abstract

When I took over the command of a West Africa Brigade Group in 1939, I found that one of the units in the brigade was a survey section, and, in the course of training this brigade, I was rather concerned as to how this survey unit would or should be used. It was a small unit consisting of three officers (Europeans) and approximately 50 African other ranks, all belonging to the local Government Survey Department. I knew that it could map any particular piece of country, or could lay outbuilding sites, ranges, etc., but, beyond this, and normal military training, I am afraid that I could think of no other ways of using it. I knew also that, when the brigade was trained, we were to move to another part of Africa and that operations were likely to take place over country which was mostly unmapped. This, then, would be the opportunity for the survey section. At the same time, the size of the country we were likely to operate in was so enormous that my little survey unit would be swamped and quite unable to produce operational maps in time for me to use them. In due course we arrived on the scene of operations. My survey section was taken away from me and merged with other sections in a survey company. This company commenced to map parts of the country in which it was considered likely fighting might take place. This was exactly what I had anticipated, although I still considered that even this bigger unit was much too small for the huge job it had to do.     

THE YEAR 1935 IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This report covers the period of the first full year since the amalgamation of the Land and Survey Departments under one administration. The general scheme of amalgamation to which reference was made in the report of the Survey Department for 1934 has functioned satisfactorily and calls for no particular comment.     

THE YEAR 1933 IN CEYLON

Abstract

IN the absence on leave of the Surveyor General, a full Report for the Colonial Survey Committee was prepared by Mr. R. W. E. Ruddock, the Deputy Surveyor General. The Department in Ceylon covers so many activities that it would be impossible to mention here more than a few.     

REPORTS. THE YEAR 1934 IN CEYLON

Abstract

The Ceylon Survey Department is gradually returning to its normal activities after the period of depression. The programme of work is again being increased as the demand for survey work grows with returning prosperity in the Colony. The Survey Department Training Classes have been reopened for training new recruits to fill the vacancies in the upper and lower grades which have been left unfilled during the retrenchments. It takes a year, however, to train a subordinate office: and two years to train a probationary Assistant Superintendent, Including one year at Cambridge. Recruiting is consequently rather. a slow process, and it will be some years before the Department is again at full strength, as there are now 27 vacancies in the Field Staff and 34 in the Office Staff to be filled, out of a total of 705.     

THE TRAINING OF AFRICAN SURVEYORS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Whenever the Government wants to receive new students to be trained as surveyors for the Government Service it is usual for the public to be informed by means of a Gazette Notice outlining the conditions of entry into the Survey School which is attached to the Land and Survey Department. Nowadays students are admitted through the Government Higher College at Yaba by means of the Entrance Examination of that college. It is one of the conditions that before a candidate applies to take this Entrance Examination he must have passed his Cambridge School Certificate Examination, the Matriculation Examination of any British University, or its local equivalent, and must possess also a certificate of character.     

THE UGANDA MAlLO SYSTEM

Abstract

The survey of “mailos” or native estates in the Kingdom of Buganda has taken a prominent place in the annual programme of the Survey Department of Uganda for over 30 years past. The survey, which has covered some 17,000 square miles and is now practically complete, has some unusual features, and although it has no claims to refinement or to great precision, a short account of its history and workings may be of general interest. The system of land settlement introduced by Sir Harry Johnston has already been described in the Empire Survey Review (“The Surveyor and the Politician”, by H. B. Thomas, vol. ii, p. 28).     

THE YEAR 1933 IN NORTHERN RHODESIA

Abstract

The general depression in world trade has affected the country to no small extent during the year in almost all branches of departmental activity. It has been particularly reflected in the Survey Department by a reduction in applications for land from new settlers, and in subdivisional surveys· carried out for private landholders. In all other branches, however, the Department has had more on its hands than its now limited staff could cope with, and there is the danger of work getting behindhand and being put aside for a future occasion whilst new projects are dealt with to supply immediate requirements.     

SOME EFFECTS OF PULLEY ECCENTRICITY IN BASE MEASURING APPARATUS

Abstract

The comprehensive paper on the suspension of tapes by M. Hotine in the January, 1939, issue of the Empire Survey Review (v, 31, 2) did not contain any reference to this question, as was pointed out by A. J. Morley in a letter published on page 261 in the same volume (v, 34, 261). A brief analysis has been made by F. Yates of the theoretical effects of pulley eccentricity and misalignment (“Gold Coast Survey Department Records” VoL III, 1931, page 43) but I have not seen any further reference to the subject and have recently experienced the effects of such a defect in our own apparatus, so the followingnotes nlay be of interest. Before proceeding to details I will describe briefly those parts of the apparatus which are considered here and give a short summary of the whole paper.     

GEORGE EKEM FERGUSON: AN AFRICAN PIONEER

Abstract

THE present Survey Department of the Gold Coast came into being in the year 1901 on account of the mining boom which necessitated a large number of concessions being taken up by Companies. In the absence of an effective central organization most of these concessions, which were indifferently surveyed by private surveyors, resulted in much overlapping of boundaries, involving a considerable amount of litigation. The Department has justified its existence by producing maps of the Colony and its Dependencies, providing plans for townplanning and communication roads as well as by training Africans as surveyors. Before the institution of the Survey Department Government surveys, mainly cadastral, in the Colony were controlled by the Public Works Department.     

THREE YEARS AND MORE OF THE RISING SUN or A COLONIAL SURVEY DEPARTMENT UNDER A NEW MASTER

Abstract

The late war has been responsible for many unusual situations—not the least of which was that of certain British Colonial Surv1ey Offices passing under the control of an Asiatic Invader, and it is thought that the story of one of them—the Survey Department of Malaya—will not be without interest to readers of this Review.     

A FIFTY-YEARS RETROSPECT

Abstract

In 1911 Lord Carrington, then President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, offered me the appointment of Director-General of the Ordnance Survey of the (then) United Kingdom, and I need not say that I accepted the appointment. I took over from my predecessor, Colonel S. C. N. Grant, on the 22nd August. The Ordnance Survey was a single department charged with the mapping, on a great variety of scales, of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Officers and men were freely interchangeable between the different countries.     

THE YEARS 1935–6 AND 1936–7 IN THE GOLD COAST

Abstract

THE Gold Coast can now be said to have recovered from the slump which caused such disastrous consequences in 1931–2 and resulted in a heavy reduction in the establishment of the Survey Department. So far there has been no increase in staff, but more badly needed money for buying stores and increasing the labour staff has been available, and authority has now been given for an increase of 12 in the establishment of African Surveyors; this will result in the re-opening of the Survey School in 1937.     

STANDARDIZING EQUIPMENT OF THE GOLD COAST SURVEY DEPARTMENT

Abstract

The following account of the standardizing equipment of the Gold Coast Survey Department has been written, at the request of the Editor of the Review, because this equipment includes a completely enclosed standard of length 300 feet long which is believed to be one of the very few enclosed standards of this length in any of the Crown Colonies.     

NOTES ON LEVELLING WITH THE ANEROID BAROMETER

Abstract

In chapter 5, page 12, of my “Report on a Rapid Geological Survey of the Gambia” (Gold Coast Geological Survey Bulletin, NO. 3) I have stated the opinion of Prof. Julius Hann of Vienna that the barometric curves may be analysed into two components:- <list list-type="alpha"> <list-item>

semi-diurnal, constant, depending on latitude and altitude (with a slight yearly alteration);</list-item> <list-item>

diurnal, depending chiefly on temperature (and humidity ?).</list-item> </list>     

THE YEAR 1931 IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The outstanding feature of 1931 was undoubtedly the rapid fall in the revenue of the Colony and Protectorate, which half-way through the year necessitated drastic reductions in Government expenditure, and in the case of the Survey Department led to the termination of the appointments of 15 European surveyors, I lithographer, and 20 members of the African staff. This cut, equivalent to a reduction of 28 per cent. of European and of 13 per cent. of African personnel, had unfortunately to be carried out at the height of the topographical and trigonometrical season and naturally entailed the closing down of some survey operations and the re-posting of officers to other duties to readjust the reduced personnel to more urgent requirements.     

SIGNAL LAMPS

Abstract

The six acetylene signal lamps of the Uganda type purchased for the Gold Coast Survey Department from Messrs. E. R. Watts & Son in 1932 were to replace others of a similar pattern which were bought about 1924 but were lost by fire when Kumasi Fort, where they were stored temporarily, was burnt out in April, 1932.