Memoir of William Watts McNair | Page 2

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 read before the Royal Geographical Society, the group attired as on their journey, with McNair in the centre, and his Mahommedan friends around him.
In introducing Mr. McNair to the meeting, the President (Lord Aberdare) said that the paper he was about to read was an account of a visit he had recently made to Kafiristan. Mr. McNair had resided in India for a long time previous to his adventurous journey, and whilst in the service of the Topographical Department in the North-west of India, had been employed in surveys beyond the frontier of Afghanistan. His attention was thus directed to the interesting country which the paper would describe. Kafiristan was a country of very peculiar interest. The name Kafiristan, or the "country of infidels," was a nick-name given by the surrounding Mahommedans, and was not that by which it was called by the natives. It had long been a reproach to English geographers that the only accounts of Kafiristan had been obtained through Orientals themselves, whose statements had never been tested by the actual visit of Europeans to the country. The consequence was that a sort of mystery surrounded Kafiristan,--so much so that Colonel Yule, when discussing an interesting paper by Colonel Tanner, on a visit he made to the borders of the Kafir country three years ago, said that when Kafiristan was visited and explored the Royal Geographical Society might close the doors, because there would be no more new work to be done. The veil had at last been drawn aside. It might be asked why the country had been so long held inaccessible. The explanation was that the inhabitants were always at war with their Mahommedan neighbours, by whom they were surrounded on all sides, and who had been extremely jealous of their communication with European travellers. Mr. McNair had penetrated Kafiristan in disguise. He (the President) had had an opportunity of seeing the paper, and he found that Mr. McNair had not dwelt upon the historical geography of Kafiristan, and therefore he would say a few words on that subject. As long ago as 1809, Kafiristan attracted the attention of one of the ablest public servants that England ever sent out to India--Mountstuart Elphinstone--who was anxious to add to his "History of Kabul" something about the people of Kafiristan; and knowing that it was inaccessible to Europeans, he employed an Indian, a man