330 Progress of Indian Maritime Surveys. [Aug. 



used of course with much more elaborate care than for the common 

 purposes of the practical voyager. 



Seeing, therefore, how entirely dependent geography has been, and 

 still is, and, for a long time to come, must be upon navigation, we learn 

 to appreciate the labours of those marine surveyors and careful scien- 

 tific navigators, through whom we have arrived at a correct knowledge 

 of the positions of islands, and of the figure of continents, and of the 

 bays and rivers, and rocks and sand-banks, which distinguish the shores 

 of seas and oceans, and thus are enabled to compile a chart which shall ac- 

 curately exhibit the phaenomena of the earth's surface, and enable future 

 voyagers to steer boldly to ports they have never before visited ; asto- 

 nishing the native inhabitants by the display of more information on the 

 subject than they possess themselves. 



There is nothing however more deceitful, or that ought to be received 

 with more distrust than a chart or nautical survey, with the author 

 of which and the materials of construction we are unacquainted. There 

 is not a midshipman nor a captain's clerk in the mercantile navy that 

 cannot take a latitude and a bearing, and with the help of the printed 

 navigation tables, make an approximate calculation of the longitude. 

 Nobody, therefore, that sails in a ship which happens to light upon 

 strange lands, or upon objects of any kind not laid down in previous 

 charts, fails to assign at once a locality to what he sees ; and if the time 

 allows him to cast anchor, a chart is constructed from a series of bearings, 

 and produced with as much confidence as if made from the best trigono- 

 metrical data. If the author of the discovery be a man of credit and in- 

 telligence, his chart is incorporated in those published to the world, and 

 continues, with all its defects, to be given out as the best record possessed 

 of the portion of the earth's surface delineated. This is exactly as it 

 should be, and no one in his senses, would wish such information and 

 materials to be suppressed ; but the difference is wide between the sketch 

 of a casual voyager of this kind, put together from compass bearings, 

 and logboard distances, and computed latitudes and longitudes, and the 

 accurate delineation of the practised nautical surveyor employed to 

 verify, and to ascertain once for all, the exact position and outline of 

 what has been hitherto vaguely and imperfectly known and reported. 



The Governments of British India are entitled to much credit, for the 

 manner in which the means at their disposal have been employed in fur- 

 thering the advance of our geographical knowledge, by surveys of this 

 kind. The department has, in the seas to the eastward of the Indian penin- 

 sulas, been for many years under the direction and personal management 

 of Captain Ross, Senior Commander in the Indian Navy, and Mariae 



