preface. 
The Journal of Major James Rennell now published is contained in a small 
quarto volume bound in parchment, and is written throughout by his own hand. 
Inside the cover is the book-plate, dated 1840, of his daughter Eady Rodd, who in 
1809 was married to Admiral Sir J. Tremayne Rodd. The book was presented 
by her grandson, the Rt. Hon. Sir James Rennell Rodd, G.C.V.O., British 
Ambassador at Rome, to the Victoria Memorial Collection accumulated under 
the auspices of Ford Curzon in 1906, and came into my hands through Sir 
T. H. Holland, Director of the Geological Survey, who asked me to discover 
whether it contained any matter of geological interest. This I found not to be the 
case, except as regards the striking and important changes that have taken place, 
and are still in progress, in the courses of the rivers of Bengal since the Journal was 
written. But it is so different in many respects from the other contemporary 
records of that most interesting period of the British occupation of India that 
have been preserved, concerning itself not with the political and social events of the 
time, but with the physical aspects of the country, its climate, crops, and com- 
munications, that it seemed to me to possess a quite unique interest ; and I 
am greatly indebted to the Council of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for their 
permission, freely accorded, to edit the Journal as one of the Memoirs of that Society. 
In many respects the picture of Bengal, as given in the Journal, differs very 
slightly from its aspect of the present day, in spite of the advance of Western 
civilisation, of our railways and our steam-boats. The first journey that I myself 
made in India was from Dacca to Maimensingh by way of the f Euckva ’ river 
in a ‘budgarow,’ which might have been the very one, so far as appearance 
and construction went, in which Rennell made the passage. Since then I have 
travelled many a mile in the same unwieldy craft, which still remain the chief means 
of transport on the waterways of the delta. Still, on either side of the rivers, ‘ padda ’ 
fields stretch to the horizon; and the mahbuilt villages, with their groves of 
bamboos and betel trees, remain as they were. Notwithstanding the uniform flat- 
ness of the ground, the scenery is often charming ; as Rennell more than once 
remarks in some such phrase as this : — “There is a very pleasant Prospect, the River 
being transparent and serpentine, and flowing through a Countrey made up of pleas- 
ant Meadows interspersed with Groves and Villages.” The only innovations 
worth mentioning are perhaps the growing of jute, which now almost overshadows 
that of rice, and the nearly complete extermination of the ‘ Tygers,’ which were so 
frequent a cause of apprehension to Rennell and his men. 
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