}ife-M Survey/ of the Zetland Islaiida. 393 



NEW SURVEY OF THE ZETLAND ISLANDS. 



An accurate chart of the Zetland Islands has long been a 

 desideratum in British hydrography. Authorized surveys 

 of them have, it is true, been made ; but of these some are 

 almost obsolete, and all are more or less partial or defective : 

 and to errors of this nature, perhaps as much as to any other 

 cause, are to be ascribed many of the disastrous shipwrecks of 

 which that remote country has too often been the melancholy 

 scene. 



It is not a little surprising, that while the most extended, 

 expensive, and minute surveys have been executed, by order of 

 the English government, of many distant regions of the globe, 

 the nautical geography of the northern extremity of the Bri- 

 tish Islands should have been so long suffered to remain in 

 obscurity. Charts are to maritime, what roads are to inland, 

 commerce ; and we duly appretiate the laudable and fostering 

 care which our statesmen have evinced to facilitate its exten- 

 sion and stability. 



The Zetland Islands have too long been the bugbear, the 

 Scylla and Charybdis of Northern mariners : hence commerce 

 has been repelled from them, and one grand source of their 

 improvement and prosperity injudiciously obstructed. Be- 

 sides, they might afford a secure refuge and resting-place, not 

 only to vessels trading in the North Sea, but also to others 

 forced by boisterous weather and unavoidable accidents into 

 their latitude. And when, superadded to these circumstances, 

 are considered the barbarous and iron-bound nature of the 

 coast, and the dangerous rapidity and variety of the currents, 

 it cannot but be highly gratifying to learn that this important 

 chasm in our maritime knowledge is in progress of being 

 filled up. 



For this purpose the Admiralty, in the month of May this 

 year, sent to Zetland their surveyor, Mr. Thomas, an officer 

 whose ability, experience, and indefatigable zeal are so con- 

 spicuous, and who has more particularly displayed his dex- 

 terity and talent in his surveys of the two metropolitan rivers 

 of England and Scotland, and their adjacent coasts ; and we 

 trust that no delay or impediment will now occur to a work so 

 very desirable, and which will reflect so much honour on the 

 enlightened liberality and humanity of our Admiralty, and 

 on the skill and activity of its surveyor. 



The coast of Zetland is every where bold and prominent, and 

 intersected with numerous and excellent harbours, of which 

 the headlands are the sublime and natural beacons ; and there 

 are few situations in which the seaman can be placed where 

 the confident guidance of an accurate chart might be of such 



Vol. G6. No. 331. Nov. i 82 5. 3D paramount 



