353 
of the Variation of the Compass at Jamaica. 
have mentioned the same in such diagrams ; otherwise it 
could only tend to mislead, not to direct. The same system 
of surveying would, and must, by law, have been continued ; 
for, (as was stated above,) the number of grants has been 
annually increased ; and the uninterrupted practice of survey- 
ing, which was always daily increasing in proportion to the 
extending cultivation and settlement of the island, could not 
admit of any change, without a new law having been made 
by the legislature for that purpose : and then such a change 
must have been recorded with the laws of the island, and 
with those that regulated the conduct of surveyors. No sur- 
veyor, nor other person, could have been ignorant of such a 
change having taken place. Since even the difference of one 
degree in running a line is very considerable ; but that of six 
would have totally changed all property, deranged all boun- 
daries, thrown woodlands into plantations, and vice versa: and, 
consequently, would have been so palpable and injurious as to 
have demanded legislative interference and correction. But 
no such change has ever happened, nor has the most remote 
idea of it ever been entertained. On the contrary, the mag- 
netical meridian, in all disputes at law about boundary lines, 
is and always has been the only criterion by which the sur- 
veyors, the court, and the jury, decide. 
From the year 1700, when Dr. Halley’s theory was pub- 
lished, it is very easy to trace down the practice of surveying 
in Jamaica, as well as up to its commencement. When I ar- 
rived in that island, upwards of 25 years since, I became 
acquainted with the oldest surveyors there, who had prac- 
tised from 30 to 40 years. They had the original papers, 
field notes, and diagrams of their predecessors, -up to the 
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