INTRODUCTION. 
5 
positions on the modern maps. It was perhaps the accuracy that Rennell had attained 
to,, by his skill and constant care in checking his observations, that led him to look 
with little favour at first on the triangulation surveys that were started in India at 
the beginning of the nineteenth century by Colonel Lambton. 1 But long before his 
death he had become convinced of the superiority of Lambton’s method. 
Very few observations of purely historical or social interest will be found in the 
J ournal. The fighting that was more or less continuously going on along the western 
frontier of Bengal during that period is not even mentioned, nor is the mutiny of officers 
on the occasion of the loss of double batta, which took place in May 1766. Rennell was 
at this time at Dacca recovering from the wounds he had received in February in 
the skirmish with the Sunyasi Fakirs, and he confesses in a letter quoted by Sir C. 
Markham * that it was only this circumstance that prevented his throwing in his lot 
with the discontented officers, for he felt very strongly on the subject. He concerns 
himself strictly with the day’s work, observing each change of weather, of which the 
Journal gives an almost complete record for the whole period, and such incidents as 
immediately affected his surveys. It was no doubt this faculty for concentrating his 
attention on the matter in hand that, in an age unparalleled in Indian history for 
the unbridled luxury of the European population, enabled him to establish that 
character for assiduity and integrity which caused the Council, unaccustomed as it 
was to find such qualities displayed by its servants, to refer to him in such apprecia- 
tive terms as they have placed on record. 
l Ibid,., p. 69. 
2 James Rennell, &c., p. 52. 
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