104 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



planning, land transactions, and comfort of motor travel, have suffered 

 more than geographical analysis. It is a very different story if we turn 

 to the vast areas under the British flag overseas. Here I am not going 

 to talk of the Dominions, for they are masters of their own affairs. It is 

 enough perhaps to suggest that they, too, are wealthy enough to survive 

 the handicap of inadequate mapping. The Anglo-Saxon abroad does not 

 seem to start with any very definite convictions on the question of good 

 stocktaking. Let us turn to the areas under the Colonial Office. The 

 first, best, and to us most natural, preliminary is to see what our forbears 

 did, and thought, about it, so that we may avoid the pitfalls they fell into 

 and start where they left off. 



At the close of the eighteenth century, Major-General Roy, Surveyor- 

 General of the Coasts, Fellow of the Royal Society, Mapper of the 

 Highlands, and spiritual father of the Ordnance Survey, had died. The 

 connection between the Observatories of Greenwich and Paris had been 

 established by triangulation. The Master-General of the Ordnance had 

 appointed a small staff, and set about the mapping of the British Isles, 

 and the question arose, ' What about the Colonies ? What about maps 

 of foreign parts ? ' The Ordnance Survey was domestic. We wanted 

 something at once imperial and diplomatic. 



The first step taken was to install, in 1803, the ' Depot of Military 

 Knowledge,' a branch of the Quarter-Master-General's Department, and it 

 included a ' drawing room ' for the copying and storing of maps and plans. 

 It is comforting to note that it was to be watched over by ' an officer of 

 approved knowledge,' and that one of the clerks ' conversant with foreign 

 tongues ' was to receive js. 6d. a day. 



Thereafter Napoleon was finally vanquished ; these tiresome new ideas 

 ceased to worry us for a time ; and a minor boom and a major depression 

 came as usual to rub in the consequences of war. The Depot of Military 

 Knowledge experienced, in that post-war period, what the Ordinary 

 Survey suffered in a later one, and it was not until the Crimean War that 

 the matter was revived. 



Major Jervis, a retired Sapper, had been employed on survey work 

 in India. He had refused, unbelievably enough, the appointment of 

 Surveyor-General in India, but he had tasted the joys of map-making 

 and knew what he was talking about. In 1846 he wrote to the then 

 Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, as follows : 



' Great Britain is the only country of note which has no geographer 

 attached to the Government, and no national depot of geographical 

 maps and plans. The Ordnance Survey is exclusively directed to British 

 territories ' (he meant the British Isles) ; ' the Hydrographic Office to 

 nautical charts ' — and so on to the wisdom of equipping the Foreign 

 Office, in particular, with reliable maps on which to study the problems 

 of territorial diplomacy. I ask you to note the underlying idea. Because 

 it was suggested by a soldier it would be assumed, to-day, that it was 

 aimed at destruction, and meant to be conducted in the darkest secrecy. 

 No such thing. The idea was a national office for the production of 

 oversea maps required by government departments. 



