his readiness of resource under unusual difficulties, and his power of attaching the frontier people to him personally, have been just as conspicuous throughout this duty as were his energy and success as a geographical topographer. Apart from his departmental career, he has won a lasting name as an explorer by his adventurous journey to Kafiristan in 1883, when on leave. It may be fairly claimed for him that he was the first European officer who set foot in that impracticable country, and he is still the best authority on many of the routes leading to it. His services to geographical science were recognised by the Royal Geographical Society, who awarded him the Murchison grant, and there can be little doubt that a distinguished career was still before him when he was suddenly cut off in the prime of his life." To those who know what an Indian Department means, such language of eulogy, no less truthful than graceful, from so respected a functionary as the Surveyor-General of India, who knew Mr. McNair personally, will carry a weight far beyond the official recognition of that deceased officer's worth to his department. The comparative neglect of a great scientific department of State, such as the Indian Survey 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