278 THE SURVEY QUESTION IN COCHIN CHINA. 



the Emperor GlA-LONG began in 1806 the survey of the 

 Delta. No trace of this work remained, however, at the 

 time of the conquest, and with his usual penetration, Luro 

 points out that in documents and deeds before the time of 

 MlNH-MANG the area of lands is never expressed in mdu, 

 a circumstance which seems to exclude the idea of the 

 existence of an earlier land-survey. It is more likely to have 

 been a general map of the country that was drawn up in the 

 time of GlA-LONG, and on this point the ordinarily accurate 

 author of Gia-dinh Thong Chi is probably mistaken. 



It is the Emperor Minh-Mang who really deserves the 

 merit of having caused the execution of the native survey. In 

 the 15th year of his reign, this sovereign sent into the 

 southern provinces a special envoy, under whose direction 

 a number of mandarin surveyors proceeded, with the con- 

 currence of the interested parties and the local authorities, 

 to register and compute the area of every allotment. 



In spite of serious errors by which, according to the old 

 (Native) Rulers, this survey was disfigured, the rapidity with 

 which it was carried out is astonishing, and to account for it, 

 one must remember the vigour of the administration of MiNH- 

 MANG, his great severity, and the promptitude with which 

 his orders were executed. 



But I hasten to say it would be most rash to deduce from 

 this instance, an impression that the execution of the pro- 

 posed cadastral survey is moderately easy. No analogy can 

 be established between a register of holdings made without 

 instruments by men ignorant of the first elements of geometry, 

 simple eye-sketches barely verified by a few measurements, 

 and the allotment survey required from our French surveyors. 



The results of this work, which was so rapidly completed, 

 were entered, for every village, in books, the so-called " des- 

 criptions of fields/' Dia-bo. Far superior in this respect to 

 our livres cadastraux (survey record books) in France, these 

 Dia-bo, according to custom, take the place, to a certain 

 extent, of the titles to property. It has been by amalgamating 

 with these the supplementary registers ( ' cahiers de correction ) 

 that the revenue-roll has since been drawn up ; but this 



