Chapter II: Part 2

Colonel Yule said he had for thirty or forty years looked with intense interest at the dark spot of Kafiristan on the map of Asia, and had therefore listened with great pleasure to Mr. McNair's modest account of one of the most adventurous journeys that had ever been described before the Society. Twenty or twenty-four years ago we had nothing but the vaguest knowledge of Kafiristan, but the country had been gradually opened out by General Walker and Colonel Montgomery's pundits in disguise. Foreign geographers had sometimes cast it in the teeth of Englishmen that their discoveries beyond the frontiers of India had been made vicariously, but in this case it was an Englishman who had performed the journey. He believed he was right in saying that no Englishman before Mr. McNair had ever visited the Swat Valley. It was now inhabited by a most inhospitable race, who had become Afghanised, but rumours had often been heard about the Buddhist there. Eighteen or twenty centuries ago it was one of the most sacred spots of Buddhism, filled with Buddhist monasteries and temples, but, as far as he knew, no European except Mr. McNair had ever seen those remains. If further explorations were carried out there probably most interesting discoveries would result. Passing on to the Panjkhora river and to Dir, there was very little doubt that those valleys were the scene of some of Alexander's exploits on his way to India. Many scholars supposed that Dir was one of the fortresses which Alexander took, and incidentally the place was mentioned by Marco Polo as the route of a Mongol horde from Badakshan into Kashmir. He believed that the earliest distinct notice of the Kafirs was the account of the country being invaded by Timour on his march to India. When he arrived at Andaráb he received complaints by the Mussulman villagers of the manner in which they were harassed by the infidels, and a description was given of how the great Ameer himself was slid down snow slopes in a sort of toboggin of wickerwork. He captured some of the Kafir forts, but could not penetrate into the country. After that very little mention was made of them in history, till Major Rennell referred to them in his great memoir on the map of Hindostan, and Mountstuart Elphinstone, who, the Afghans used to say, could see on the other side of a hill. He always seemed able to collect items of knowledge which further research proved to be correct. He (Colonel Yule) rejoiced that had lived to see Kafiristan partially revealed by an Englishman and not by a Russian.

Dr. Leitner said it was well that travellers, however naturally accurate in their observations, should submit their results to the criticism of learned societies, for, after all it was in such centres that information from various quarters could be best collected, sifted, and compared. The task of a pioneer is proverbially ungrateful, but he is sufficiently rewarded if he collects facts for the examination of scholars, and if some of these facts stand that test. On the other hand, it was essential that, as a rule, no one should be sent out on a geographical, anthropological, or ethnographical mission who was not something of a linguist or who was not accompanied by a linguist, and who had not given proof of sympathy with alien races. Hayward fell a victim as much to his temper as to the greed and treachery of Mir Wali, whom he had insulted. An Arabic proverb says that "the traveller even when he sees is blind," and if, in addition to this artificial blindness, he is practically both deaf and dumb owing to his ignorance of the language of the people among whom he moves, it is almost certain that he will make many mistakes, if not insure failure. Now few results are apt to be more delusive than a mere collection of words, or even of short sentences. The instances of "a dead policeman" as a Non-aryan equivalent for the abstract term "death" which the inquirer wanted; of the rejoinder of "what do you want?" for the repeated outstretching of the "middle finger," a special term for which was sought, and numerous other mistakes, are often perfectly avoidable, and it was therefore desirable that the traveller, armed with an inexhaustible patience, should not content himself with a collection of words, but also add the sentences in which they occur, and, if possible, also collect fables, songs, and legends. The process in dealing with a race whose language one does not know at all is more difficult, but, even in initial stages, the procedure of pointing to objects that are required will not only generally give their native equivalents, but will also elicit the orders or imperatives for these objects being brought, whilst the use of these imperatives by the traveller will often elicit the indicative or future in the assent or dissent of those to whom the imperatives are addressed, or else an ejaculatory affirmative or negative. The early training in, at least, two languages will also enable the inquirer to discriminate between the substance of a fact or thought, if he might use such a term, and the sound that represents it, for, if he has only studied his own language early in life, he will never be able to emancipate himself completely from the confusion which is naturally engendered between the idea and his special manner of expressing it. Adaptation, again, even more than translation, is what is required, and in order that the adaptation, should be practised successfully, geographical inquiry cannot be altogether dissociated from philology, nor can philology be dissociated, as it so often is, from ethnography, history, and anthropology, which throw either a full light or at least a side-light or half-light on linguistic problems, as has been pointed out by Dr. Abel. The gestures too of a race are of importance in eliciting correct information, for it is obvious that where, on rugged mountain sides, ascent or descent can only be practised by the aid of the hands as well as of the feet, the terms for "up" and "down" may be significant of surrounding topography, just as, to reverse the argument, where many meet only to fight, the putting of the fingers of both hands together will mean "collision," instead of its being the more usual sign for "multitude," or the limit of computation which a savage race may have reached. Finally, in this age of subdivision of labour on a basis of general knowledge, the present practice of explorers working separately without the co-operation of colleagues in the same or kindred branches, and sometimes even without a knowledge of the material that already exists, should be discouraged. The first step to be taken is the compilation of travellers' handbooks, dialogues, and vocabularies for the various districts of the so-called "neutral zone," so as to give to these travellers the key of information and to the sympathy of the people, and our Government of India especially might with advantage steadily collect both old and new information, not at the time _when_, but long _before_, an emergency arises, so that it may be dealt with by a wealth of knowledge when it does arise. Had this view obtained when the "poor relatives of the European" were seen by Sale, Macnaghten, Wood, and others, thousands of Kafir men and women would not have been carried into slavery by the Afghans, hundreds of Kafir villages would not have been destroyed, and the area of Kafir traditions would not have been both corrupted and narrowed by the broadening of the belt of "Nimchas," or converted Kafirs, which so increases the difficulties of an exhaustive inquiry into at least the _past_ of an interesting race. Above all should we have had a faithful ally in our operations against Kabul, for even as it was, the tardy knowledge of that war by the Kafirs sufficed to bring thousands into the field ready to be let loose on their hereditary foe, whilst it put a stop, at any rate temporarily, to the internecine feuds, which, as much as Muslim encroachments, reduced the number of Kafirs. He hoped that the visit of Mr. McNair and of the native Christian missionaries recently in Kafiristan, might be another step towards the future union and civilisation of a race that, whether in part descended from the colonies planted by Alexander the Great or not, should no longer be treated as "poor relatives" by their European brethren, for whom the interposition of friendly and vigorous tribes of mountaineers, along with the Dards with whom they have so much in common, between the British and Russian possessions in Asia, cannot fail to be an advantage in the interests of peace. As to the various routes to and through Kafiristan, he would add nothing to-night to what had been so ably stated, but as regards the languages, he could not forbear mentioning that there are at least five distinct dialects spoken by the tribes, which differ as much as Italian does from French, if not from German, although based on Aryan roots common to them all. Their religious beliefs and customs also show great divergencies as well as similarities. The members of various Kafir and kindred tribes, of whom he submitted a few photographs to the meeting, and whose measurements have been taken, have supplied an amount of information which may be laid before the Society in due course, along with, he hoped, a very full account of a neighbouring race that is anthropologically and linguistically perhaps even more interesting than the Kafirs, who are mainly Dards; he meant the people of Hunza (Hun-land?), who language is, if not a prehistoric remnant, at any rate like no other that has hitherto been discovered, in which the pronouns form an inseparable part of numerous substantives and verbs, and in which gutturals are still in a state of transition to vowels. This people practise a code of religion and of quaint immorals fortunately confined to themselves, but which is not without some bearing on the question of the "Mahdi," now giving us some trouble in Africa. As some Kafirs call themselves "Kureishis," wnich favours a Shia notion in opposition to their Sunni persecutors, he might incidentally observe that the expectation of a "Mahdi" is a singular importation of a Shia notion, not entirely without our aid, into the orthodox Sunni Mahommedan world, which has so long been content with the _de jure_ Khalifa, the Sultan, belonging to the category of "imperfect" Khalifas, as a chief and representative who is admittedly a "defender of the faith" only so long as he has power to enforce his decrees and is accepted by the general _consensus_ of the faithful, the very essence of Sunni-ism, the "al-sunnat wa jamáat". This view is in bold contradiction to the _hereditary_ principle, represented, by the "Mahdi" of the "Imam's" descent from the Kureish tribe of Arabia, which caused the very separation of the Shia sect from the Sunnis, which is the very essence of Shia belief, and which has among other fictions, led to the assumption of the name of "Kureishi" by some of the Kafirs.

Sir Henry Rawlingson was glad of the opportunity of expressing his high appreciation of the value of Mr. McNair's exploration. His journey was not a mere holiday trip, or an every-day reconnaissance survey; on the contrary, it was a serious undertaking, and opened up what he (Sir Henry), for twenty years had maintained to be the great natural highroad from India to Central Asia. The route to the north of the Kabul river and along the Chitral Valley was by far the most direct and the easiest line of communication between, the Punjab and the upper valley of the Oxus; and although native explorers had, as Colonel Yule had observed, already traversed the route and brought back a good-deal of general information concerning it, Mr. McNair was the first European who had ever crossed the Hindu Kush upon this line, or had gained such an acquaintance with the different ranges as would enable geographers to map the country scientifically, and delineate its physical features. The seal which Mr. McNair had exhibited to the meeting was of Babylonian workmanship, and although relics of the same class were of no great rarity in Persia and Mesopotamia, it was a curious circumstance to find one in such a remote locality as the Swat Valley, and could only be explained by supposing it to have belonged to one of Alexander's soldiers who brought it from Babylon. Eldred Pottinger had found a similar relic at Oba on his journey through the mountains from Herat to Kabul. The tradition in the country had always been that the Kafirs whom Mr. McNair visited, were descended from Alexander's soldiers; but there was not in reality the slightest foundation for such a belief. Neither in language nor religion, nor manners and customs, was there the least analogy between the Kafirs and Greeks. The various dialects spoken by the tribes of the Hindu Kush, including the Kafir tongues, were all of the Perso-Indian branch of the Aryan family, and showed that the mountains must have been colonised during the successive migrations of the Aryan tribes from Central Asia to the southward. It might perhaps be possible some day to affiliate the various tribes, when the vocabularies had all been collected and compared by a good philological scholar, but at present there was much uncertainty on the subject. Colonel Yule had expressed his pride and satisfaction at Mr. McNair's success, and had congratulated the Society on the great feat of exploring Kafiristan for the first time having been accomplished by an English rather than by a Russian geographer. He (Sir Henry) would furnish a further source of gratulation by remarking on the fact that on the very day when Mr. McNair had related to the meeting the incidents of his most remarkable journey, intelligence had been received from the Indian frontier of another surprising geographical feat having been achieved by a British officer who was already well known to the Society, and who was, in fact, the chief of the department to which Mr. McNair belonged. He alluded to the successful ascent of the great mountain of Takht-i-Suliman, overlooking the Indus Valley, by Major Holdich, of the Indian Survey Department. This mountain, from its inaccessible position beyond our frontier, and in the midst of lawless Afghan tribes, had long been the despair of geographers, but Major Holdich with a small survey party had at length succeeded in ascending it, and was said to have triangulated from its summit over an area of 50,000 square miles. The Survey Department might well be proud of holding in its ranks two such adventurous and accomplished explorers as Major Holdich and Mr. McNair. The President said that Mr. McNair agreed with Sir Henry Rawlinson that the route he had described would undoubtedly be the best into Central Asia, but the account of the journey did not inspire him (the President) with any confidence as to immediate results in the future. Mr. McNair had to disguise himself as a Mahommedan who was acceptable to the Kafirs, and it did not appear that he had in any way facilitated the entrance into the country of any one who could not conceal his nationality. The reports, famished by native explorers sent from India, had, however, been fully established by Mr. McNair, and it would therefore appear that the best way of solving the problem was to send educated natives into Kafiristan. He was sure the meeting would heartily join in giving a vote of thanks to Mr. McNair for his interesting paper.

It will be noticed by those who read the paper closely flow remarkably absent from it are all allusions to personal experiences, such as fatigue, weariness, physical discomfort, sense of disappointment, or other of the necessary incidents of so toilsome an effort and long sacrifice. As was the character of the man, so is his paper, simple, direct, without any of the exaggerations of peculiar features in the exploration or rhetorical artifices of description to enhance the effect of the discoveries of the traveller, and with an entire suppression of himself. For all that appears in the paper, he might have been engaged in the most enjoyable pursuit, free from all personal risk or daily discomfort.

I desire to testify rather to what I knew of the man himself during a close friendship of over eighteen years.

In youth he was very ardent and affectionate, but as he advanced in years the hardships of his life and the long periods of solitude he passed through seemed to mellow the natural demonstrativeness of his nature, and he appeared to me to have suffered that chastening which all men derive as their blessed portion from communion with Nature in her loving and silent moods; the very ruggedness of mountain solitudes speaking to the heart of man with a solemnity no tongue can reach. A subtle writer in the London _Spectator_ of the 14th September last, in the course of an article on "Clouds," has attempted to describe the idealising lesson of her works to the spirit of man as "the tranquil rhythm of this fair Nature, the hurrying throb of the human interests it measures, there is the eternal poem of human life." In this wise, a subdued sweetness in William McNair's nature remained, which was a transfiguration of his ardent, buoyant, somewhat impulsive early manhood.

On the cricket-field he was in his heartiest element. Men would make a scratch team at the sound of his voice, just to be led by him as captain. No mean field or batsman, he excelled in bowling. His resource in taking wickets was only equalled by the good temper with which adversaries walked away from the field with their bats after that terrible McNair had done for their score, or their hopes of one. I have seen him demoralise a whole team by the way in which he would take wicket after wicket, within an hour, by the artful way in which he adapted the style of his bowling to the character of the man who fenced him at the wicket. Boys were simply enamoured of him, for, by that instinct which never fails the young, he won their heartfelt devotion by his quick discernment of the weaknesses and proclivities of all the young with whom he ever came in contact. I have seen my youngest son--a lad of eleven--after years of separation from him, when the boy met him in London, in 1884, nestle on his knee quite spontaneously, to listen to some of his Kafiristan exploits not touched on in his paper. His beaming, manly laugh of amusement and tender compassion over the boy's simplicity when asked by my ingenuous lad why he did not kill a lot of those fellows during those days of danger, I fancy I see while I write. Indeed, this keen participation in the nature and delights of the young was the secret of his success during the Kafiristan exploration. It was the touchstone of his sympathy with the various barbaric tribes with whom he had to come in contact, and whose nature he did not require to learn, for he had already sounded all that was human in its touching variety. Love and sympathy for man as man, could alone give this knowledge and furnish this magic key to hearts in wilds unknown. No human system of mental training could ever do it. In this connection I smile somewhat at Dr. Leitner's profound German dialectic in the discussion on the paper read by McNair over the preliminary preparation in language and terms required by an explorer to do his work effectively. Where man is equipped by that instinctive faculty of accommodating himself to the men of all nations with their physical attributes and surroundings, I think he may dispense, in a large measure, with the science of language as an open sesame. Nature has her own methods.

This being more in the nature of a memoir purely personal in its details, giving the characteristics of the man who performed an exploit deemed by the Royal Geographical Society worthy of the Murchison Grant, I may be pardoned for adding a few private particulars of the events leading to the death of one so young, and whose career was so full of promise at its earthly close.

During the summer of the year 1888, McNair met with a very serious horse accident, one, indeed, that might with complete natural sequence have terminated his life on the spot. The vicious horse of a friend he was riding to tame the brute (for he was a skilful horseman as well as good at sports), reared and fell over on him. By the display of personal alacrity he managed to avoid vital injuries, but sufficient of the animal's body came on his own to render it necessary that he should be carried home in a "jhampan," or Sedan chair, used in the mountain sanitaria of India for the conveyance of ladies. A friend's house in the neighbourhood of the spot where the accident occurred was of great use in restoring him somewhat from the effects of the accident. The kind friends who helped him to undertake the journey to his house, about a mile distant (carried in this way on men's shoulders), did Mr. McNair one of those services for which India is renowned as a land of friendly help. The injuries sustained internally nevertheless kept the patient in bed for a month, and the nursing of a mother and sister brought him round sufficiently to enable him to do his work as usual to all appearance. During the ensuing winter he had very hard work, which involved much exposure, and he suffered exceedingly from the effects of that accident. Immediately after he felt indisposition of any kind he complained of a return of the pains due to the accident, and there can be but little doubt that the inward injuries then sustained had left their mark, though nominally healed. 1888-9 was a severe winter in the mountain regions of our frontier, and a letter I had from McNair in April, 1889 (the last letter I ever received from him), gave some description of the vicissitudes of temperature he had to undergo. I give the letter in his own words in the Appendix, as a facsimile of his handwriting, to show how precise a hand he wrote, and as a memento of himself which some of his many friends might wish to cherish, for I believe that in many respects handwriting bears marked characteristics of the qualities of the individual. Here I will only extract the following description of the trials my friend had to undergo in the matter of temperature. In camp, away from Quetta and all means of procuring supplies on the spot, he writes under date the 2nd of April, 1889: "For the past fortnight I have had a rough time of it with rain, wind, and haze. Since yesterday there has been a change for the better, so now I hope to push along with my observations. Just at present I am in a low valley, and consequently the heat is somewhat trying, but in another fortnight I expect I shall be complaining of it being a _little bit_ too cold, at an elevation of 10,000 and odd. I have little or no news to give, as it is now some time since I saw a pale face, but somehow or another solitude has its charms for me." The writer of that letter soon after applied for three months' leave, having experienced broken health for some time previously, in constant returns of fever, but owing to the delay that occurs in getting post letters despatched from the frontier away from posting stations, and the circumlocution which is a feature in all great departments of State, McNair did not get his leave sanctioned till sometime in July, 1889, and he was not able to start from Quetta for his mountain home in Mussooree, a distance of several days' trying journey, until the early days of August. The fond hearts of a mother and sister that awaited him there had no knowledge of the dangerous character of the fever from which he had been suffering for nearly a fortnight before he started from Quetta.

Within a very few days after his arrival at Mussooree, the doctors held a consultation over his case, as the fever could not be subdued by any treatment tried, and then the truth that it was typhoid had to be acknowledged. All that medical skill and affectionate nursing of devoted relatives, friends, and a qualified nurse, could do towards saving the patient was done, and hopes were entertained of recovery till almost the last; but three days before the fatal end, hemorrhage of the intestines set in, and then the medical attendants despaired. McNair himself spoke soon after his arrival at Mussooree of the hour of separation having come, and asked for his brother George. The suddenness of the end gave all his friends a painful shock, for many had not even heard that he was dangerously ill; and, as to the relatives, silent consternation for the moment are the only words that can adequately describe their desolation and sorrow. A fervently attached younger brother George, a popular member of the well-known firm of Messrs. Morgan and Company, the solicitors for the East Indian Railway Company, hurried up from Calcutta, on a telegram to join his family at Mussooree, but when he left he did not know of his brother's death. It was only when he reached the foot of the mountains, at a place called "Rajpore," within two hours' ride of Mussooree, where he inquired of the hotel manager if any recent news had been received of his brother's condition, that he got news not only of his brother's death, but of his burial. The railway journey from Calcutta to Mussooree is a long one of about a thousand miles; but Indian Railways, travelling even at express speed, do not exceed twenty-five miles an hour. The sympathy experienced by the sorrowing family from near and distant friends was beyond mere conventional words of condolence. I have it, from the members of the family themselves, that they were comforted in a very real and essential manner by the tender and extremely touching devotion of their friends, the depth of whose regard was then for the first time in many cases discovered. Rising above and beyond this general sympathy, two proofs came with a binding and enduring force that mark them out for special mention. They typify the two extremes of human life and the complexity of human relations. On the one hand there was the perfect knowledge of every detail of daily life and sacrifice, and the loyalty and enthusiasm that made such a life possible, which _sharing_ a life to the full means. On the other, there was the tender reverence bred of looking up to something that seemed better and higher than the common lot of men. The two extremes I refer to were centered in the man who had most scientific knowledge of William McNair's worth, and the closest sympathy with his life, namely, Colonel Holdich, of the Royal Engineers, under whom McNair served, and for whom I know McNair had the highest admiration and the warmest personal regard, and native subordinates McNair had under him, who loved as only Asiatics can love Europeans whom they revere. An intrepid explorer himself, _vide_ the announcement made regarding Colonel Holdich by Sir Henry Rawlinson at the close of the discussion on the paper read by McNair, Colonel Holdich has added year by year to his many signal scientific services rendered to the Indian Government; and recently he has added to his many accomplishments the rarer merit among men of that love of worth in others, which culminates in human brotherhood. His words of appropriate Oriental metaphor, in writing to the family, that his sense of personal loss in the man with whom he had for years, in the wildest solitudes and the most prolonged hardships, eaten "bread and salt" together, made it difficult for him to say all he felt, were emphasised by the human grief he could not repress at the funeral; where, owing to the suddenness with which everything had happened, he was indeed the "chief mourner"--in touching emotion that bore witness to the depth and susceptibility of the man's noble nature. The other testimony, which kindled great comfort in the desolate household, came from the scene of McNair's latest exploit, far away, at and near Quetta, when his native companions and friends heard of his death. The grief felt was so profound, that it seemed irreparable to the men who mourned their beloved friend, as the leader who was also their constant companion, and always cheerful with them under every adversity. The Oriental may be unappreciated by the Saxon till the latter knows the sentimental side of every Asiatic character, but then the floodgates of human sympathy are opened, and the very counterpart of characteristics and qualities exhibited by Saxon and Asiatic, conduce and contribute to a closer and more romantic union between them. It is on the principle which Bagehot so profoundly illustrated when he said that no age is just to the age immediately preceding it, because of their similarity and proximity. The appreciation of Colonel Holdich for his valued coadjutor and the executant of many of his plans was based on the contrary principle acutely observed on by George Henry Lewes, when he remarked that surprise, like appreciation, can only have for foundation of any worth, a background of close observation and exact perception.

I state the simple truth when I record that the testimonies, received in this way from the two extremes of highest knowledge and most diverse social and national conditions, remain the most grateful and enduring memorials of a life's work to those who must ever cherish the memory of what this memoir is precluded from touching on, namely, the more sacred domestic endearments of the life-long devotion to family ties of a son and a brother. This much I may be permitted to reveal without any intrusion on the hallowed reserves of the family circle. A more united or more tenderly-knit family, of strong religious feeling, I have never known. I had the privilege twenty-one years ago, of knowing a younger brother of the deceased, named John, who in less than three years attained to an honoured position in the Finance Department of the Indian Government. He was preternaturally grave and philanthrophic, and died at the age of a youth in England (I think he was not 23 years old) of small-pox contracted at Lahore, in the Punjab, where he was stationed at the time. He had for some time, although but a lad in years, spent his leisure hours in attending the hospital, and reading to sick soldiers, where it is believed he contracted the disease. Of the living, conventional usage forbids all mention, but I have deemed it right to reproduce as appendices to this skeleton and imperfect memoir the notices that appeared in the principal Indian papers of William McNair's death, as also the obituary notices taken from the proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society for October and November, 1889.

The extract reprinted from the _Pioneer_ editorial gives the most complete and faithful description of Mr. McNair's achievements during a too brief day of usefulness. Portions of that editorial need a passing word so far as the subject of this memoir is concerned. With regard to the disapproval of the Indian Government of McNair's venture in entering Kafiristan without the permission of his Government, I never heard a word from his lips by way of complaint, although no doubt the paper accurately describes the facts.

Nor did I ever hear a syllable from the brave, unselfish man of disappointment at the way in which his worldly prospects were never advanced in the slightest by the nobly adventurous work he had done. By nature he was too bent on doing the work in hand to theorise about anything. By character he was too loftily absorbed in loyalty and reverence for the law of obedience as a root-principle of his life, to deplore any want of appreciation of his worth on the part of the Government which he had so loyally served. It is true, as the "Pioneer" points out, that on the Russian side such a man would have had honours and distinctions showered upon him. He would have been dragged out of his retirement and made to feel he was the favourite of the monarch, for the risk to life he had undertaken in spontaneous devotion to the State. Not only is such warmth and enthusiasm not the English method, but the Indian Government is a huge machine which goes grinding on in its mechanical way, and is besides, a bureaucracy which has a good deal of pride in regarding any new departure as a dangerous token of disrespect to its old and consecrated tradition of simple obedience to written orders and codified instructions. The highest originality is smothered in a secretariat as its fitting cabinet. McNair knew these attributes of the Indian Government, and never troubled his head about preferment or official promotion. It is said he was on the eve of it, and the State is believed to somewhat deplore the loss of an opportunity for rewarding a servant it prized, doubtless, in its own dull, routine sort of way. But he is now beyond earthly rewards or distinctions, and neither the praise nor the blame of men can touch him. In life he was very sensitive to kindness or coldness, but he was of too masculine a fibre to allow the natural sweetness and contentment of his disposition to be alloyed or marred by any such influence from without. He loved his work for its own sake. It became his sole occupation and serious aim in life. He deplores the weather in his very last letter to me, most characteristically, because it interfered with his "observations," which, with "the change" he hoped for and partly realized, he would "_push_ along."

The epithet describes the simple, practical side of his character. His later love of solitude was the natural outcome of that closer contact with nature which made to him a living daily reality the command, "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me." His last hours were ministered to faithfully by a chaplain of the English Church in Mussooree. The religious life of the family resigned itself speedily to that sovereign will of heaven which means to all who have tasted of its majesty and glory, and have seen glimpses of the wisdom and foresight that put man's desires to shame, the submission of heart and mind in all their integrity. Nay, more, as one from that inner circle very beautifully put it in a letter to the writer of this memoir, "It was 'infinite love' alone that permitted his return to us to die, surrounded by our love," and in a lovely mountain region where for many years he spent his annual summer and autumn "recess," working out the results of the observations made during the rough winter's campaign, he lies buried near the home of his loved ones. There the eternal stars give a more brilliant light to the pure air surrounding his last resting place, and the solemn pines and firs pointing heavenwards with their venerable age and sighing their constant hymn give an everlasting pathos to the story of man's day on earth. The hill sides, terraced into beds of flowers--many wild and more cultivated, especially dahlias, which grow in great luxuriance and richness of colour in the hills of India--form the beautiful ground-work of an Indian cemetery in a sanitarium like Mussooree. On that spot, as it lies, the visitor will behold on one side, to the south, the dark shadow of a mountain elevation, called the "Camel's Back," by reason of its shape and sheer projection upwards, typifying the wall of human sense at sight of death; and on the other he will look out upon the ever-changing, though distant line of perpetual snow. The snow view in India, on mountain regions, is beyond description. No word-painting could give an idea of it; and few artists have been able to reproduce the magical effects of sunrise and sunset on the snows during the varying seasons of the year. The roseate tints of dawn blush on their peaks till they become a flame, and pale into iciest marble; and the evening splendours of purple and violet and death-like blue are the phantasmagoria which no human hand has ever made a living picture. Like the human life, it grows into beauty, coruscates, and then passes into darkness.

Looked at from the purely materialistic side, doubtless, the lives of men are mere seaweed thrown up by the mighty ocean of Creation on the shores of Time. But from the Christian's higher standpoint, the broken arc is made a magic circle on the side we cannot see.

_There_, let us trust, all lives which seem to us to have snapped asunder here, in imperfect fruition of bright promise, may find their perfect fulfilment of desire. As Faber poetically says:--"Death, after all, is a darkening and disappearance of those we love, and we must be content to take it so. It is only a question of more or less, where the darkness shall begin, and what it shall eclipse first. To the others who have loved the dying, and have gone before him, it is not a darkening, but a dawning. Perhaps to them it is the brightest dawn when it has been the most opaque and colourless sunset on the side of the earth." Or as Keble, with divine humility of richest spiritual imaginativeness, expresses it--

"Ever the richest tenderest glow
Sets round the autumnal sun--
But there sight fails: no heart may know
The bliss when life is done."

J.E.H.

20, Earl's Court Square, South Kensington, London, October 20th, 1889.

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_Extract from_ "THE DELHI GAZETTE," _August 19th_, 1889.

A LIFE OF PROMISE ABRUPTLY ENDED.--It was with feelings of deep sorrow that we read in _The Pioneer_ of Friday last the death notice of Mr. William McNair, the Kafiristan explorer. A man singularly frank and genial, he was 33 years of age when he undertook the venture that won for him the medal and fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society which were conferred in 1884. In that year he had the satisfaction of lecturing before British audiences on the results of his travels, and as it was the first time he had visited the land of his fathers the pleasure of seeing the old country under circumstances so honourable to himself was doubly keen.

The story of his adventures may be briefly told. Every one knows that the Government of India issued strict injunctions against allowing any European to cross the Afghan frontier. Nevertheless that restless spirit Sir Charles McGregor, Quartermaster-General, was naturally anxious to know something of the debateable land that lies north of the Kabul river and south of the Hindoo Koosh, and which tradition alleges to have been colonised by the soldiers of the Great Alexander himself. We have no doubt, that McGregor prompted the enterprise, though McNair never distinctly said that he had been urged by so high an officer to break the orders of his official superiors. The affair was arranged in this way. McNair took furlough, and ceased for the moment to be a servant of Government. He disappeared across the frontier and was not heard of again till his safe return was assured. Of course he had confederates; one in particular, a tribal chief whose friendship he had secured in the Afghan campaigns of 1878-79. His disguise was, however, pretty complete, walnut juice being, we believe, the material that converted a florid complexion into the tan so natural to Afghan mountaineers. He had the wisdom to confine his words to a language he understood as well as English, viz., Urdu, and posed as a _Hukeem_ from India impelled by a spirit of benevolence to visit unknown lands for the sake of caring the ailments of his fellew creatures. Had he attempted to talk Pushtoo, his foreign intonation would have been detected, while his knowledge of that tongue enabled him to detect the drift of any conversation that was carried on in his presence. Once, we believe, he was in imminent danger, a proposal having been set on foot to put an end to the wanderings of the _Hukeem_, as an English spy. A rapid change of quarters averted the danger, and he afterwards fell in with the people he came to see, viz., the Kafirs, who whether, descending from Alexander's Greeks or not, received him kindly. We believe the _Hukeem_ was aided in his researches by a big book supposed to contain medical receipts, but which was in reality a box of surveying instruments, its outside covered with cabalistic signs bearing a family resemblance to a plane-table! The _Hukeem_ was much given to solitary meditation, and generally sought mountain peaks for that purpose. On such occasions the plane-table afforded him invaluable assistance.

But we have said almost enough of poor McNair's adventure. On his return he was ordered to Simla and officially reprimanded by the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, for disobedience of orders! He was consoled, however, by being told by the same nobleman at a private interview that his pluck was admired, while his fast friend, Sir Charles McGregor, received him with open arms. Such was the bright opening of a career that was so soon to be cut short at Mussooree by typhoid fever.

McNair was a favourite with both sexes. By the men he was adored on the cricket-field, where his bowling was most effective, while the girls, who always possess second sight in the way of detecting a good fellow when they see him, loved him _en masse_. It may be some consolation to the widowed mother now robbed of her darling boy, to know that there are heavy hearts in other homes besides her own--the purest tribute that can be laid on the grave of one who was a good son as well as a gallant explorer.

We note that the fever of which he died was contracted at Quetta.

_Extract from_ "The Pioneer," _August 20th,_ 1889.

THE LATE MR. McNAIR.--The lives of some men are so intimately connected with certain phases in the general development of knowledge that their biographies afford short but useful pages in the history of progress which may well be read in connection with more stirring national records. Thus it was with the life of a man who quietly passed from the subordinate branch of the Survey Department into the land of shadows on the 13th of this month at Mussoorie. At the commencement of the year of grace 1879, a little over ten years ago, we were groping our way across the borderland which separates India from Turkistan, in unhappy ignorance of all but two or three partially illustrated lines of advance which might land us either at Kabul or Kandahar. Considering the vital importance that it always has been to India that at least a creditable knowledge of the countries separating her from Russia should exist, the geographical mist which enveloped the highlands of Afghanistan and the deserts of Baluchistan in 1879 was certainly remarkable. It is true that the war of 1839-43 had brought to the front one or two notable geographers, amongst whom North, Broadfoot, and Durand were conspicuous, but it had also developed a host of inferior artists, whose hazy outlines and indefinite sketches tended most seriously to obscure the really trustworthy work of better men. More, a good deal, was known about Kandahar and Kabul than of our present frontier opposite Dera Ismail, or of the passes leading from Bannu across the border only a few miles distant. Indeed, so far as that frontier was concerned, from Peshawar to Sind, no military knowledge of it existed whatever. It is with the gradual evolution of light over these dark places that McNair's name is so closely associated. For many years previous to the Afghan war he had been making himself thoroughly acquainted with modern survey instruments of precision, which are to the scientific weapons of our forefathers of fifty years ago what the Gatling and Henry-Martini are to the old Brown Bess. He was one of the first to grasp the true principles of using the plane-table when rapid action is necessary, and right well he turned his knowledge to account. It was the advance on Kabul in 1879 that first introduced him to the notice of military authorities, and in the course of that year's campaign he had added more to our map information than all the geographers of the "old" Afghan war put together.

Some of his exploits were remarkable, as for instance when he explored the Adrak Badrak pass leading from the Lughman valley to Jugdalak with no military escort whatever, trusting only to the tender mercies of an "aboriginal" guard. He thus made himself acquainted with every detail of the direct road from Kabul, _viâ_ the Kabul river, to Jalalabad; and with him our practical acquaintance with that important route has passed away. No sooner had he left Afghanistan than he was attached to the frontier party then working in the Kohat district; there he was Major Holdich's right-hand man. If there was a specially hard frontier nut to be cracked, McNair's powers of assimilating himself to Pathan manners, and of winning the confidence of all classes of natives, which had already carried him through many a perilous undertaking, were most fully utilised for the purpose of cracking it. From Kohat to Dera Ismail he was incessantly engaged in quiet little unobtrusive excursions (with full political sanction _bien entendu_) which resulted in a very complete map of the border, a map which it will be hard to supersede. There is one particularly awkward corner of our frontier--awkward from a military as well as geographical point of view--which thrusts itself forward over the general line into British territory, and which can never fail to attract the attention of the frontier traveller. This is the rocky fastness of Kafir Koh. From red salt hills south of Bahadur Khel the three-headed peak of Kafir Koh is seen standing up like a monument in the southern distance: nor is it less a conspicuous feature when viewed to the north from the Bannu road. At the back of it, to the west, is the direct road connecting the upper Meranzai valley with the Bannu district, of which the existence was known, but not the nature, when McNair took it in hand. Up the sheer face of that square-cut peak, composed chiefly of shifting sand and pebbles, which overtops the rest, McNair did his best to climb. He did not succeed for the reason that no living thing without wings has probably ever succeeded in surmounting it, although there is a legend to the effect that a specially active Waziri robber did once contrive to reach the top--and there remained to starve; but the English explorer at least got far up enough to obtain the clear view he required, and he came back richer in wisdom to the extent of many square miles of most remarkable mapping. His name soon became well known on the border, especially amongst the Waziris, and so much did they appreciate his own appreciation of themselves, that there is a story current that one well-known Mahsud chieftain stopped a Punjab Cavalry detachment near the border line and demanded a passport order from McNair. Perhaps his best achievement about this part of his career was the mapping of all the approaches to, and the general features of the lower Tochi valley.

In 1883 he conceived the bold scheme of taking leave and exploring Kaffiristan in disguise, trusting to the good fellowship of certain Pathan friends, amongst whom two members of the Kakur Khel were chief. It was a bold scheme for many reasons. The physical difficulties of the project were many. The impossibility of keeping up a continuous disguise was well known to him, and last, but not least, "What would Government say?" For fear of involving others in any venture of his own, he resolved to cut himself adrift from his department for the time being and take his chance. In order to appreciate properly the spirit of enterprise which animated the man, critics of his actions should put themselves in his place. He was well aware that the information which he could obtain would be of the highest value; further, he knew that probably there was not another man in India who could obtain it as successfully as himself, and he judged that some slight exception might be made in his favour if he took on himself the responsibility of accepting a most favourable opportunity of doing most valuable work at the expense of infringing certain rules about crossing the border. These rules were, to say the least, vague and indefinite, and had never been officially promulgated. Reward or recognition of service he rightly never expected. It must fairly be conceded that the conditions under which such a spirit of enterprise was shown made that spirit especially honourable--for the Government of India has never been in a position to encourage any such ventures. On the contrary, the possible gain in information has always been held to be more than counterbalanced by the chance of "complications." Lord Lytton, ever ready to bewail the decadence of a soldierly spirit of enterprise amongst our officers, was yet never quite able to see his way to making such enterprise possible to a man who valued his commission. Lord Ripon, under whose rule indeed more geographical work was completed than under any previous Viceroy, was apt to regard the line of frontier peaks and passes much as a careful gardener regards a row of beehives--as subjects of tender treatment and watchful care: whilst Lord Dufferin has lately with one wide sweep removed the great incentment to all exploration enterprise by making the results thereof "strictly confidential." These are cloudy conditions under which to grow a true spirit of enterprise, and where it here and there crops up and flourishes in spite of circumstances it is surely all the more to be commended.

The story of McNair's journey to Kaffiristan need not be told here. It was not made strictly confidential in those days, and it will be found in the chronicles of the Royal Geographical Society. For this performance he obtained the Murchison grant of the Society, and on the strength of it he may be said to have taken his place amongst the first geographers of the day. His frontier work did not end here. For the last two years he was engaged on the most trying work of carrying a "first class" triangulation series from the Indus at Dera Ghazi Khan, across the intervening mountain masses, to Quetta, thence to be extended to the Khojak, a work which involved continuous strain of mountain climbing, of residence with insufficient cover in intensely cold and high elevated spots, and the unending worry of keeping up the necessary supplies both of food and water for his party. No doubt it tried his constitution severely, and a hot weather at Quetta is, unfortunately, not calculated to restore an impaired constitution. Although very ill he determined to leave Quetta when his leave became due, and he made his way with difficulty to Mussoorie to die amongst his own people.

McNair belonged to a department which is not great in distinctions and decorations, and is connected with no celestial brotherhood. Indeed, it has no dealings with stars but such as are of God's own making--and he belonged to what by grace of official courtesy is called the "subordinate" branch. Out of it he never rose, though had he lived on the Russian side of the border his career might well have brought him high military rank and decorations in strings across his uniform. They say that decorations are "cheap" there. Yet it should be remembered that zeal, industry, enterprise, and patriotism are "cheap," too, if they are to be won by them. Perhaps we manage better. The good old copybook maxim, "Virtue is its own reward," must be McNair's epitaph, whilst we cannot help feeling that India could have better spared many a "bigger" man.

_Extract from_ "THE STATESMAN," _August 27th_, 1889.