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 INTRODUCTION. o

verted into the side of a square.' It is not difficult to account for this serious blunder, which, indeed, is only one of the many wliicii it was impossible to avoid, so long as the only accounts of the country were derived from travellers who reached it by journeying across inhospitable deserts, or navigators who, in the infiincy of their art, effected a long and perilous passage by following the windino-s of the intervening shores A great advance was made when the Portuguese doubled the Cape of Good Hope. From that time, the Indian coast became accessible in all directions, and its outline was easily traced. To map out the interior was a work of greater difficulty — a work in which little progress covdd be made while tlie struggle for supremacy in the East remained undecided. No sooner, however, were the foundations of oiu- Indian empu-e securely laid,

Portuguese di»tx)vei'ie».

India, ACCORDir^o to Ppolemt.

than the necessity of obtaining a tliorough knowledge of its surfiice was Mo.iem geo

.... . . gniphj'.

urgently felt. Accordingly, in addition to district sm-veys, one embracing the coimtry in all its length and breadth has been undertaken at the instance of government, and carried on with all the aids which tlie refinements of modern science supply. In this way, most of the blanks in Indian geogra])hy have been filled up, and a map, not unworthy of the vast and magnificent coimtry which it delineate.s, is advancing to completion.

In tlie course of the following work, the important })urposes to which the valuable materials accumulated by these surveys are applicable will often be-

' Forbiger's Ilandhuch dcr alien Geographic, particularly the illustrative majis in vol. i