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 EVERDINGEN, ALLART VAN (1621–?1675), Dutch painter and engraver, the son of a government clerk at Alkmaar, was born, it is said, in 1621, and educated, if we believe an old tradition, under Roeland Savery at Utrecht. He wandered in 1645 to Haarlem, where he studied under Peter de Molyn, and finally settled about 1657 at Amsterdam, where he remained till his death. It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than that which is presented by the works of Savery and Everdingen. Savery inherited the gaudy style of the Breughels, which he carried into the 17th century; whilst Everdingen realized the large and effective system of coloured and powerfully shaded landscape which marks the precursors of Rembrandt. It is not easy on this account to believe that Savery was Everdingen’s master, while it is quite within the range of probability that he acquired the elements of landscape painting from de Molyn. Pieter de Molyn, by birth a Londoner, lived from 1624 till 1661 in Haarlem. He went periodically on visits to Norway, and his works, though scarce, exhibit a broad and sweeping mode of execution, differing but slightly from that transferred at the opening of the 17th century from Jan van Goyen to Solomon Ruysdael. His etchings have nearly the breadth and effect of those of Everdingen. It is still an open question when de Molyn wielded influence on his clever disciple. Alkmaar, a busy trading place near the Texel, had little of the picturesque for an artist except polders and downs or waves and sky. Accordingly we find Allart at first a painter of coast scenery. But on one of his expeditions he is said to have been cast ashore in Norway, and during the repairs of his ship he visited the inland valleys, and thus gave a new course to his art. In early pieces he cleverly represents the sea in motion under varied, but mostly clouded, aspects of sky. Their general intonation is strong and brown, and effects are rendered in a powerful key, but the execution is much more uniform than that of Jacob Ruysdael. A dark scud lowering on a rolling sea near the walls of Flushing characterizes Everdingen’s “Mouth of the Schelde” in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. Storm is the marked feature of sea-pieces in the Staedel or Robartes collections; and a strand with wreckers at the foot of a cliff in the Munich Pinakothek may be a reminiscence of personal adventure in Norway. But the Norwegian coast was studied in calms as well as in gales; and a fine canvas at Munich shows fishermen on a still and sunny day taking herrings to a smoking hut at the foot of a Norwegian crag. The earliest of Everdingen’s sea-pieces bears the date of 1640. After 1645 we meet with nothing but representations of inland scenery, and particularly of Norwegian valleys, remarkable alike for wildness and a decisive depth of tone. The master’s favourite theme is a fall in a glen, with mournful fringes of pines interspersed with birch, and log-huts at the base of rocks and craggy slopes. The water tumbles over the foreground, so as to entitle the painter to the name of “inventor of cascades.” It gives Everdingen his character as a precursor of Jacob Ruysdael in a certain form of landscape composition; but though very skilful in arrangement and clever in effects, Everdingen remains much more simple in execution; he is much less subtle in feeling or varied in touch than his great and incomparable countryman. Five of Everdingen’s cascades are in the museum of Copenhagen alone: of these, one is dated 1647, another 1649. In the Hermitage at St Petersburg is a fine example of 1647; another in the Pinakothek at Munich was finished in 1656. English public galleries ignore Everdingen; but one of his best-known masterpieces is the Norwegian glen belonging to Lord Listowel. Of his etchings and drawings there are much larger and more numerous specimens in England than elsewhere. Being a collector as well as an engraver and painter, he brought together a large number of works of all kinds and masters; and the sale of these by his heirs at Amsterdam on the 11th of March 1676 gives an approximate clue to the date of the painter’s death.

His two brothers, Jan and Caesar, were both painters. (1606–1679), mainly known as a portrait painter, enjoyed some vogue during his life, and many of his pictures are to be seen in the museums and private houses of Holland. They show a certain cleverness, but are far from entitling him to rank as a master.  EVEREST, SIR GEORGE (1790–1866), British surveyor and geographer, was the son of Tristram Everest of Gwerndale, Brecknockshire, and was born there on the 4th of July 1790. From school at Marlow he proceeded to the military academy at Woolwich, where he attracted the special notice of the mathematical master, and passed so well in his examinations that he was declared fit for a commission before attaining the necessary age. Having gone to India in 1806 as a cadet in the Bengal Artillery, he was selected by Sir Stamford Raffles to take part in the reconnaissance of Java (1814–1816); and after being employed in various engineering works throughout India, he was appointed in 1818 assistant to Colonel Lambton, the founder of the great trigonometrical survey of that country. In 1823, on Colonel Lambton’s death, he succeeded to the post of superintendent of the survey; in 1830 he was appointed by the court of directors of the East India Company surveyor-general of India; and from that date till his retirement from the service in 1843 he continued to discharge the laborious duties of both offices. During the rest of his life he resided in England, where he became fellow of the Royal Society and an active member of several other scientific associations. In 1861 he was made a C.B. and received the honour of knighthood, and in 1862 he was chosen vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society. He died at Greenwich on the 1st of December 1866. The geodetical labours of Sir George Everest rank among the finest achievements of their kind; and more especially his measurement of the meridional arc of India, 11° in length, is accounted as unrivalled in the annals of the science. In great part the Indian survey is what he made it.

His works are purely professional:—A paper in vol. i. of the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, pointing out a mistake in La Caille’s measurement of an arc of the meridian which he had discovered during sick-leave at the Cape of Good Hope; An account of the measurement of the arc of the meridian between the parallels of 18° 3′ and 24° 7′, being a continuation of the Grand ''Meridional Arc of India, as detailed by Lieut.-Col. Lambton in the'' volumes of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta (London, 1830); An account of the measurement of two sections of the Meridional Arc of India bounded by the parallels of 18° 3′ 15″, 24° 7′ 11″, and 20° 30′ 48″ (London, 1847).

 EVEREST, MOUNT, the highest mountain in the world. It is a peak of the Himalayas situated in Nepal almost precisely on the intersection of the meridian 87 E. long. with the parallel 28 N. lat. Its elevation as at present determined by trigonometrical observation is 29,002 ft., but it is possible that further investigation into the value of refraction at such altitudes will result in placing the summit even higher. It has been confused with a peak to the west of it called Gaurisankar (by Schlagintweit), which is more than 5000 ft. lower; but the observations of Captain Wood from peaks near Khatmandu, in Nepal, and those of the same officer, and of Major Ryder, from the route between Lhasa and the sources of the Brahmaputra in 1904, have definitely fixed the relative position of the two mountain masses, and conclusively proved that there is no higher peak than Everest in the Himalayan system. The peak possesses no distinctive native name and has been called Everest after (q.v.), who completed the trigonometrical survey of the Himalayas in 1841 and first fixed its position and altitude.

 EVERETT, ALEXANDER HILL (1790–1847), American author and diplomatist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 19th of March 1790. He was the son of Rev. Oliver Everett (1753–1802), a Congregational minister in Boston, and the brother of Edward Everett. He graduated at Harvard in 1806, taking the highest honours of his year, though the youngest member of his class. He spent one year as a teacher in Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and then began the study of law in the office of John Quincy Adams. In 1809 Adams was appointed minister to Russia, and Everett accompanied him as his private secretary, remaining attached to the American legation in Russia until 1811. He was secretary of the American legation at The Hague in 1815–1816, and chargé d’affaires there 