ABSTRACT
Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements. In March of 1856 Andrew Scott Waugh wrote a letter. Twenty-four years prior to this he had joined the team of British surveyors who were carrying out what was then called the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The contents of Waugh’s letter were then communicated to London and eventually reached the desk of not only the Royal Geographical Society, which had been monitoring the progress of the survey, but also the British Secretary for the State of India. In honor of his onetime chief, the man who began the Great Trigonometric Survey of India so many years before, Waugh suggested that this ‘stupendous snowy mass’ be named after Colonel George Everest. He therefore christened it with the French designation ‘Mont Everest’, a suggestion soon changed by Waugh to the English ‘Mount Everest’.
