The Ordnance Survey of Great Britain. 24-7 
The credit of originating and carrying into execution the first 
tangible project for a systematic topographical survey of part of 
the kingdom is divided between two engineer officers, both at the 
time holding distinguished positions on the staff of the British 
army. The,idea would seem to have followed close upon the san- 
guinary termination at Culloden of the “forty-five” rebellion, by 
which the fate of the house of Stuart was decided, in the reign 
of George the Second. 
It was doubtless the outcome of that unhappy rising for it con- 
templated a general map of the Scottish highlands, precisely 
those parts of the country in which the heart and soul of the 
insurrectionary movement had all along centered. The difficul- 
ties of moving troops through these wild mountain districts, and 
without any clear knowledge of the passes connecting the glens 
and fastnesses, or of the correct distances intervening, would have 
been enormously lessened by the possession of good maps. 
The survey of this wild and inaccessible region was under- 
taken in 1747 by Lieutenant-General Watson, an engineer, ably 
assisted by William Roy, who afterwards played a distinguished 
part in the earlier geodetic work of the Ordnance Survey. 
The map, at first intended to be confined to the Highlands 
only, was at last extended to the Lowlands and thus made 
general in what related to the mainland of Scotland, the islands 
(except some lesser ones near the coast), not having been sur- 
veyed. 
It is spoken of by Lieutenant-Colonel White, in his excellent 
book on the Ordnance Survey, as a “ piece of work which appears 
to have been excellently carried out as far as it went, qualified by 
the remark of Roy that owing to the comparative inferiority of 
the instruments used and the inadequacy of the annual grants 
provided for the survey it is rather to be considered as a magnifi- 
cent military sketch than a very accurate map of the country.” 
The survey of Scotland was interrupted by the breaking out in 
1755 of another of England’s intermittent wars with France, that 
which gained her Canada, and the work was never completed. 
“On the conclusion of the peace of 1763,” writes General Roy, 
“it came for the first time under the consideration of government 
to make a general survey of the whole island at the public cost.” 
But, for reasons not assigned, the twelve years’ interval of peace 
before the outbreak in 1775 of the American War of Independ- 
ence was allowed to pass away without anything being done. 
