Caleb George Cash

MacInnes (see body) characterizes this portrait of Cash that was printed opposite the title in his last book as that of a "lightly built man about 40 years old photographed with a stern (in the manner of the times) expression" with hair that is "immaculately combed". Caleb George Cash (1857–1916), honorary fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (FRSGS), was a geographer, passionate mountaineer, and music and geography teacher, known for his work on preserving the maps of medieval Scotland made by Timothy Pont (c.1560–c.1627), which formed the basis for the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, and for organizing and publishing a bibliography compiled by Arthur Mitchell throughout Mitchell's life. Born in Birmingham, England, educated in London, and having worked in the North of England for a while, in his 30s he settled in Scotland and pioneered climbing in the Cairngorms, a mountain range in the eastern part of the Scottish Highlands.

Biography Cash was born in poverty, in a working class family living in Ladywood, Birmingham, in June 1857. He attended St John's in Ladywood and chose a career in teaching. He attended St Mark's College in Chelsea, London, and then London University. He taught school in Sheffield, and there met Alice Octavia Randell; they married in July 1881 and in 1886 moved to Scotland. For 30 years, he taught music and geography at the Edinburgh Academy, and spent his summers in Aviemore, then a popular holiday resort which gave access to the Cairngorms.

His wife Alice accompanied him on a rare few of his climbs. He makes no mention of her doing so after 1894, although she accompanied him on a walk to view an eagle's nest in 1903 and cycling up Glen Nevis in 1907. She also accompanied him on his tours of chambered cairns and standing stones around Killin and Aberfeldy. Hill-walker Kellan MacInnes suggests, from experience that he characterizes as common to "every mountaineer", that Cash's mention of the "occasional disaster of over late return" in Nights and Days may refer to Alice waiting anxiously at home for his return and being worried when he is late. He further suggests that Cash's experiments with moonlight excursions were perhaps a way of avoiding being away all day from, or late returning to, Alice, saying that "while Sir Hugh Munro sometimes climbed at night to avoid disturbing landowner's sport, Caleb climbed at night to avoid upsetting his wife."

He was interested in the ecology of the land as well, and in 1907 published (privately) an account of the local history of the osprey and their persecution.

Cash died in August 1917 after a short period of illness. Cash preserved the manuscript maps for the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, some of which had been worked on by Pont between 1583 and 1596; Pont signed 36 of the maps that Joan Blaeu engraved. These manuscripts had "fallen into disarray", and Cash began by preserving them.

He became friends with cartographer Sir Arthur Mitchell in 1901, and assisted Mitchell while he was working on publishing the Macfarlane's Geographical Collections; Mitchell was also his correspondent while Cash worked on what became A Contribution to the Bibliography of Scottish Topography, which incorporated the large collection of notes Mitchell left behind after he died in 1909.

MacInnes's biography of Cash, shortlisted for the Saltire Society's First Book of the Year award in 2013, is part autobiography, part biography of Cash, and part history of the exploration of Scottish hills by climbers, complete with diagrams and illustrations of climbing routes and the like.

Selected publications Books (; )

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