User:David Kernow/Thomas George Montgomerie

The peaks of the Karakoram were surveyed by Thomas Montgomerie in the 1850s and numbered as K1, K2 etc.

born 1830?

http://offroadpakistan.com/misc/explorers_and_a.html

The real giants of the Karakoram were not sighted until 1856, when Thomas G Montgomerie, of the Grand Trigonometrical Survey of India, standing on Haramukh peak in the Pir Panjal, spotted two huge peaks about 220 kilometers away, which he labelled K1 and K2, the K standing for Karakoram K1 turned out to be Masherbrum, which was measured that same year by Adof Schlagintweit, a German now largely forgotten at least in the English speaking world, though he was one of three brothers who undertook extraordinary journeys through the Himalaya; his measurement of 7821 meters is still accepted today. The Schlagintweit brothers were the first to cross the Karakoram Pass, and Adolph was the first European to reach Yarkhand. He was murdered somewhere near Kashgar.

http://www-c.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tibet/ascend/pundits.html

Year after year Tibet thus continued to remain a no-go area for map-makers, and therefore a blank on everyone's charts. Then, in 1862, a young Royal Engineers officer attached to the Survey of India hit upon a brilliant solution. Why not, he asked, send native explorers, hand-picked for their intelligence and resourcefulness, and trained in clandestine surveying techniques? The officer, Captain Thomas George Montgomerie, explained his idea thus:

'When I was in Ladakh I noticed the natives of India passed freely backwards and forwards between Ladakh and Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan, and it consequently occurred to me that it might be possible to make the exploration by that means. If a sharp enough man could be found, he would have no difficulty in carrying a few small instruments amongst his merchandise, and with their aid good service might be rendered to geography.'

Montgomerie's chiefs agreed to let him put his idea to the test, confident perhaps that a native could always be disowned if it came to it, and that reprisals would hardly be called for in the event of his death. Nonetheless, in view of their anxiety not to upset their Asiatic neighbours, especially Manchu China, it was a surprising decision. For Yarkand, in the heart of Chinese Central Asia, was chosen as the target for this sensitive mission.

Montgomerie's first recruit was Mohamed-i-Hameed, a young Muslim clerk already trained in simple survey work. In the summer of 1863 he set out from Ladakh, the last outpost of British influence, and headed across the Karakoram passes towards Yarkand, an oasis town on the ancient Silk Road. Both he and Captain Montgomerie knew that he was taking his life in his hands, and that detection meant alnost certain death. Every effort, therefore, had been made to reduce to an absolute minimum the risk of discovery. The surveying instruments he carried were of the smallest possible size, designed and made specially in the Survey of India workshops. These were still early days, and Montgomerie and his colleagues had not yet begun to adapt Buddhist prayer-wheels and rosaries to clandestine ends. Chinese Turkestan, although only a stone's throw from Tibet, was in any case a Muslim region.

http://adventurepages.com/Srch.asp?Term=Karakoram

History: The Karakoram was first visited by adventurous European travelers during the first half of the nineteenth century. They included Alexander Gardner, William Moorcroft, G. T. Vigne, Richard and Henry Strachey, Dr Thomas Thomson and Alexander Cunningham. Then came the surveyors from India: Captain T. G. Montgomerie (1856), Col. Henry Haversham GodwinAusten (the first to explore the great southern glaciers Chogo Lungma, Kiafo, Panmah and Baltoro in 1861, and their principal assistants, Beverley, Brownlow, Shelverton, Ryall and Johnson, who shared with them the pioneer observations and exploration.