BRITISH CONTRIBUTION 147 



Knowledge was now increasing so rapidly that it became 

 impossible to compile a map of the whole country on the 

 methods employed by Rennell; however, until the emergence 

 of an organized Survey department and the completion of the 

 Great Trigonometrical Survey in the next century, Rennell' s 

 'Hindoustan' remained the basis of Indian cartography. 



All this activity on land and sea was making available a 

 great mass of cartographic material to the map publishing 

 houses in London. It was through the output of these firms, in 

 which the new facts were collated and presented in convenient 

 format, that the work of surveyors all over the world ultimately 

 reached the public. No longer did this filter at second hand 

 through the publications of continental establishments. London 

 had become the universal centre of cartographic progress. 

 During the period of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, 

 the seas were the virtual preserve of British sailors, and mari- 

 time, commercial and military enterprises, while requiring the 

 best available maps and charts for their execution, provided in 

 return a mass of observations and records by which the existing 

 material could constantly be amended. British cartographers 

 availed themselves to the full of these opportunities, and for 

 the first time their work received international recognition. 

 Parallel with this expansion, there was a marked improvement 

 in the construction and engraving of their maps, which, by their 

 clarity and freedom from conjectures or unverified detail, in 

 themselves conveyed a general impression of accuracy and 

 thoroughness. British cartography was thus freed from its 

 dependence upon continental sources. 



The beginning of this advance is to be found in the work 

 of Thomas Jeffreys. He was the publisher of Benjamin Bonn's 

 one inch to the mile map of Devonshire, the first county map to 

 win the award of £100 oflFered by the Royal Society of Arts, 

 1765, and himself surveyed several counties. His most important 

 later work was the publication of the improved charts of the 

 American coasts resulting from the labours of men like James 

 Cook. Important collections of these — American Atlas, North 

 American Pilot, and West Indian Atlas — were published after 

 his death by his successor, William Faden. At Faden's estab- 

 lishment the first sheets of the Ordnance Survey maps were 



