By Michael Cairns, RSGS Collections Team 

This memorable map portrays memorable scenery. The map is of the southern half of the Cuillin ridge in Skye. These mountains are the most rugged and challenging for hill walkers in the British Isles with technically difficult ridges to climb – generally requiring ropes, highly magnetic rock that negates the use of compasses for navigation and maps that can be difficult to interpret.

What really makes the map memorable is reflecting on the effort that went into its production. The map was produced from surveys conducted in 1875. The original map was revised in 1901 and a Second Edition of the six inches to the mile (1:10,560 scale) map was produced in 1903. The Society’s copy is a reprint of 1926, which, incidentally was priced at 5/- per sheet. The map represents impressive work, the surveys out in the field must have been challenging for the two man team equipped with a theodolite and a ranging pole with at least one of them having to climb to high points on the hills. The large volumes of data produced would then have had to be drawn as a map in two dimensions. Looking at the map in detail shows the considerable time that would have been taken to draw the mountains by hand.

The map was then printed in heliozinographed form. This process entailed photographing the hand drawn map to produce a negative which would then be placed in direct contact with a zinc plate to transfer the image. The zinc plate would then be used in a printing press to mass produce the final paper copies of the map.

A feature of the map is that the summit ridge is highlighted by an absence of drawing, resulting in a thin white line, though in reality it is not as flat as this would suggest.

Two of the hills portrayed were named in the 1870’s after the first known climbers. The remainder of the hills are older Gaelic names. Sgurr Alasdair, Gaelic for Alexander’s peak, is the highest point in the range and is named after Alexander Nicolson who made the first recorded ascent in 1873. Nicolson was a lawyer and a native of Skye who was a mountain climbing pioneer in Scotland. Nearby Sgurr Mhic Choinnich, Gaelic for McKenzie’s peak, commemorates local guide John Morton McKenzie, the first to climb the peak in 1887, and the first professional mountain guide in Scotland. The 1901 revision added the two recently named peaks to this memorable map.