The drawings in this sketchbook were made in and around Fort George and Inverness, shortly after the 1745 Jacobite uprising. This amusing caricatured group shows a meeting of the Board of Ordnance – the fore-runner of the Ordnance Survey, who were responsible for making maps. The Board began their military survey of remote areas of the Scottish Highlands in September 1747, soon after which Sandby was appointed as draughtsman to the project. It was part of a wider campaign to restore peace and control to the area following the events of 1745. It was during this survey that Sandby made this humorous drawing of his fellow board members. It looks forward to the satires he made on his eventual return to the south.