Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/258

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STREETS AND HOUSES

undertaking required at least two and a half years for its proper completion. The map was published at sixty rupees a copy, but poor Upjohn does not appear to have prospered as a surveyor. There is a fleeting glimpse of him trying to cultivate cochineal in an Alipore garden, and then, bankrupt once more, he passes finally off the stage, nor is his name to be found in that sad directory of the dead, the "Bengal Obituary."

An earlier map-maker than Upjohn was Captain, afterwards Lieut-Colonel, Mark Wood, who in 1784-5 undertook a survey of the town for the commissioners of police. The work occupied over two years, and cost twenty-eight thousand rupees. This map showed each house in the town, and was on a scale of twenty-six and a half inches to the mile.

A reduced copy of Wood's map was issued in 1792 by Baillie, at the comparatively moderate price of twenty-five sicca rupees a copy, mounted on a roller, or twenty rupees if pasted on cloth. In his advertisement of this "Plan of Calcutta" in the Calcutta Gazette, Mr. Baillie excuses himself for a delay which had occurred in the publication, on the ground that he had been "waiting many months in the expectation that the streets in the native part of the town

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