Between 1764 and 1781, the Scots surveyor George Gauld was assigned by the British Admirality to chart the waters of the Gulf Coast off British West Florida, an area that extended from New Orleans to the modern-day Florida. In 1773, Gauld submitted some of his findings to the APS, probably in hopes of having them published in the Transactions, and although these were not published, they became one of the first mansucripts entered into the Society's collections. Contains occasional brief references to Native peoples of the areas described. The Gauld manuscript also includes an extract of a letter from John Lorimer to Gauld, 1772, and a sketch of the Middle and Yellow Rivers of West Florida by Thomas Hutchins. When it was received at the APS, it was endorsed: "This long uninteresting Paper can hardly obtain a Place in the Transactions of a Philosophical Society. It should however be preserved in the Files for the Use of Historians or map makers."