Excerpt from The Journals of Major James Rennell, First Surveyor-General of India: Written for the Information of the Governors of Bengal During His Surveys of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, 1764 to 1767 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 Lady 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, British Ambassador at Rome, to the Victoria Memorial Collection accumulated under the auspices of Lord 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.