BARON PIETER MELVILL

See also:

• VAN

VAN CARNBEE (1816–1856)  , Dutch geographer, was born at the Hague on the loth of May 1816 . He traced his descent from an old Scottish family, originally, it is said, of Hungarian extraction . Destined for the navy, in which his grandfather Pieter Melvill van Carnbee (1743–1810) had been admiral, he imbibed a taste for hydrography and cartography as a student in the college of Medemblik, and he showed his capacity as a surveyor on his first voyage to the Dutch Indies (1835) . In 1839 he was again in the East, and was attached to the hydrographical bureau at Batavia . With the assistance of documents collected by the old East India Company, he completed a map of Java in five sheets, accompanied by sailing directions (Amsterdam, 1842) . He remained in the East till 1845 collecting materials for a chart of the waters between Sumatra and Borneo (two sheets, 1845 and 1846) . On his return to Holland he was attached to the naval department with the charge of studying the history of the hydrography of the Dutch East Indies . He also undertook, in connexion with P . F. von Siebold, the publication of the Moniteur des hides, a valuable series of scientific papers, mainly from his own pen, on the foreign possessions of Holland, which was continued for three years . In 185o Melvill returned to India as lieutenant of the first class and adjutant to Vice-Admiral van den Bosch; and after the premature death of this commander he was again appointed keeper of the charts at Batavia . In 1853 he obtained exemption from active naval service that he might devote himself to a general atlas of the Dutch Indies . But in 1856 he fell a victim to climate, dying at Batavia on the 24tke., of October .

In spite of delays in

engraving, twenty-five sheets of the atlas were already finished, but it was not- till 1862 that the whole plan, embracing sixty sheets, was completed by Lieut.-Colonel W . F . Versteeg . In 1843 Melvill received the decoration of the Netherlands Lion, in 1849 that of the Legion of Honour .