ey Department
undoubtedly is, as a mere ornamental section of the huge and complicated
machinery of that gigantic Empire called India, is but too often repeated
by a department and its official heads in regarding the merits of the
living and the dead who sacrifice their lives to its achievements; but
in this one instance, at least, it cannot be said that the head of a
department fell beneath his opportunities for doing himself and his
subordinate due honour. It is not always from official neglect, or human
pride and indifference, that this want of sympathy for human labour and
human devotion arises, but rather from the infinite preoccupations and
monotonous overwork of the faculties of all public servants of any
position of importance in that vast continent of swarming bees intent on
their day's labour and nothing else. It is a good token for the future
that men shall feel their labour is appreciated, although a desire for
official recognition may be no incentive to the devotion itself. It is
certain that William McNair always valued the appreciation of his
official superiors, and that nothing could have given him greater
pleasure or more comfort, in his review of his own brief labours, than to
have known he would be thus remembered by the head of his own department.
To natures that regard the daily associations of an arduous career as
giving a sanctification all their own, the testimony of colleagues--and,
most of all, of the responsible mouthpiece of those colleagues--is
specially and naturally dear. Within this period of twenty-two years'
faithful service to the State occurred the remarkable exploit, the
account of which, as read in a paper before the Royal Geographical
Society of London, on the 10th December, 1883, I transcribe into this
memoir direct from the proceedings of that society, published in the
number for January, 1884, in the following words, giving the substance
of what was said by the President of the society, who introduced the
lecturer, and the several speakers who raised a discussion on the subject
of the paper after it had been read.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.[1]

_A Visit to Kafiristan_. By W.W. MCNAIR.

(Read at the Evening Meeting, December 10th, 1883.)

[1] In order to let the reader see how perfect was the disguise of
McNair during his Kafiristan expedition, I have prefixed to this Memoir
a portrait of McNair, taken a year or two before his death, and to the
paper rea