SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER (1817-1911)
Mount Everest or Sagarmatha or Chomolunga (8,848 m - 29,029ft)
Nepal - China border
1. In Himalayan sketches, 1850 , Watercolor by Walter Hood Fitch based on Joseph Dalton Hooker first observation of Mount Everest. Courtesy Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
2. In The Himalayas from Choonjerma pass, 1848, First known sketch of Mount Everest-
Courtesy Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
The mountain
Mount Everest (8,848 m - 29,029ft), also known in Nepal as Sagarmāthā and in Tibet as Chomolungma, is Earth's highest mountain. It is located in the Mahalangur mountain range in Nepal and Tibet. The international border between China (Tibet Autonomous Region) and Nepal runs across Everest's precise summit point. Its massif includes neighbouring peaks Lhotse (8,516 m -27,940 ft); Nuptse (7,855 m -25,771 ft) and Changtse (7,580 m -24,870 ft).In 1856, the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India established the first published height of Everest, then known as Peak XV, at (8,840 m -29,002 ft). The current official height of (8,848 m -29,029 ft) as recognised by China and Nepal was established by a 1955 Indian survey and subsequently confirmed by a Chinese survey in 1975. In 1865, Everest was given its official English name by the Royal Geographical Society upon a recommendation by Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India. As there appeared to be several different local names, Waugh chose to name the mountain after his predecessor in the post, Sir George Everest, despite George Everest's objections.
The artist
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI CB PRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science. He reminded famous for his Voyages to Antarctic (1839-1843), Himalayas and India (1847-1851), Palestine (1860), Morocco (1871), and Western United Statesof America (1877). He is the first European to have sketched Mount Everest and Himalayas (see above) as well as Mount Erebus and Mont Terror in Antarctic. Voyage to the Himalayas and India 1847–1851
On 11 November 1847 Hooker left England for his three-year-long Himalayan expedition; he would be the first European to collect plants in the Himalaya. He arrived in Calcutta on 12 January 1848, leaving on 28th to begin his travels with a geological survey party under 'Mr Williams', who he left on 3 March to continue travelling by elephant to Mirzapur, up the Ganges by boat to Siliguri and overland by pony to Darjeeling, arriving on 16 April 1848.
Hooker and a sizeable party of local assistants departed for eastern Nepal on 27 October 1848. They travelled to Zongri, west over the spurs of Kangchenjunga, and north west along Nepal's passes into Tibet. In April 1849 he planned a longer expedition into Sikkim. Leaving on 3 May, he travelled north west up the Lachen Valley to the Kongra Lama Pass and then to the Lachoong Pass. Campbell and Hooker were imprisoned by the Dewan of Sikkim as they travelled towards the Cho La in Tibet. A British team was sent to negotiate with the king of Sikkim. However, they were released without any bloodshed and Hooker returned to Darjeeling, where he spent January and February 1850 writing his journals, replacing specimens lost during his detention and planning a journey for his last year in India.
In an article of the Alpine Journal, it was demonstrated by Stephen Goodwin how the sketch above is the very first known drawing in situ of Mount Everest. "Is this 1848 sketch by Joseph Dalton Hooker the first recorded view of Mount Everest by a European? Drawn in situ on the ‘Choonjerma pass’ – now generally referred to as the Mirgin la – in eastern Nepal, it has, for many years, lain unidentified in the archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Its ‘discovery’ adds one more facet to the remarkable accomplishments of Hooker during his three years of exploration and research in the eastern Himalaya."