FRANCIS HAMILTON (ONCE BUCHANAN). СА 
In this despateh the Court nominated Buchanan, on the ground tliat he had been 
deputed by Lord Wellesley to carry out the survey of Mysore and had afterwards 
been given the management of the menagerie which Lord Wellesley һай formed st 
Barrackpur, as the Surveyor to be employed. 
In accordance with this recommendation Lord Minto, then Governor-General, 
appointed Buchanan to the post of Surveyor. Buchanan, who had in the meantime been 
promoted to the rank of Surgeon (on 20th June 1807), made preparations to begin work, 
so that when the Government at Calcutta issued final orders on 11th September 1807, 
he was in a position at once to carry them out. The survey was directed to be 
commenced in the district of Rangpur and. to be continued thence westward, district 
by district, throughout the Gangetic plain to the north of the Ganges, till the western 
limits of the Company’s territories were reached. This done, the districts to the south 
of the Ganges were to be taken up, one by one, in reverse order, and when they 
had been completely surveyed, Dacca and the districts along the Company’s Eastern 
frontier were to be dealt with. At the same time Buchanan’s enquiries were to be 
extended to adjacent countries and to minor states with which the Government at 
Calcutta had no regular intercourse, though as regards all such foreign territories the 
information was to be obtained either by cross-examining natives of such countries or 
states as might be temporarily sojourning within the Company’s territories, or from 
the reports of subjects of the Honourable Company who had travelled or resided 
across the Company's borders; Buchanan himself was expressly prohibited from quit- 
ting the Company’s possessions. 3 
For each district Buchanan was instructed to prepare a full topographical account, 
The climate and meteorology, the history: and antiquities of the arca were to be 
described. The number and condition of the inhabitants were to be reported on; 
their food, their habite, their diseases, the state of education among them and the 
resources of their poor were to be dealt with. The nature and state of their religion, 
the number and character of their various tribes and sects; the resources and the 
influence of their chiefs and their priests; the feeling of these temporal and spiritual 
leaders towards the Company’s Government were all to be assessed. The natural 
productions of each district, animal, vegetable and mineral; the fisheries, forests, mines 
and quarries were to be enumerated and discussed. Agriculture in the widest sense, 
including the nature and quality of the crops grown and the stock reared ; the character 
and conditions of the tilth, ав regards methods, implements, manures, means. of 
irrigation and the like; the size of farms and the bearing of this on the condition 
of the farm labourers; the state of landed property and the systems of tenure 
prevailing, so far as these affected agriculture, were all to be considered. Тһе 
progress made by the inhabitants in the fine arts, the common arts and manufac- 
tures; the architecture, sculpture, and paintings; the processes and the machinery 
employed; the quantity of goods manufactured and the amount of raw material and 
capital available were all to be estimated. Finally, an account was to be given of 
the character, the channels and the extent of their commerce. | | 
me than this was probably never entrusted to а 
A more comprehensive programme than be 
single officer in or out of India, and it is equally probable that no officer better 
qualified than Francis Buchanan to undertake the task ever lived. For this, it must 
be recollected, was a real survey, undertaken on the spot by a competent observer, not 
| quarters of a “Соуеггшеті, of reports submitted 
an assessment, by an officér at the head- > 
