The Immeasurable Wilds: Travellers to the Far North of Scotland

Alexander Bryce's Map of the North Coast of Britain..., 1744: one of the most important Scottish maps of the 18th century.

I devote half of the first chapter of my book The Immeasurable Wilds to a description of a map by Alexander Bryce - how it came to be published, and what it contains. It is not a well-known map, but it is one of the most important Scottish maps to be issued in the 18th century. It is called A Map of the North Coast of Britain from Row Stoir of Assynt to Wick in Caithness, and it was published in 1744.

This part of Britain was vitually unknown to most of the inhabitants of the British Isles, and a small portion of the north coast, that included Cape Wrath at the western end, had been left off all the maps of Britain published during the 17th century. No one seemed to know whether Cape Wrath and Faro Head were one and the same place, and the two headlands were fused into one.

The Dutch map shown above was published in the same year as Bryce's map, and shows Faro Head ('Hoofd') with no sign of Cape Wrath. The accuracy of the entire north coast is particularly wanting in this map, showing the importance of Bryce's survey.

Bryce's map corrected those errors, and also attempted to aid shipping that chose to use the Pentland Firth, a notoriously difficult passage of water where the Atlantic meets the North Sea. The map cites places of safe harbour, and describes some of the fierce tides that run in the Firth. The survey was commissioned by the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh.

The map contains a certain amount of text. I was keen to display it in some detail, but suspect it will not all be clear. Still, I think it is worth doing, and recommend you visit the website of the National Library of Scotland who can offer you an image of the map with better resolution than I can provide.