Memoir of William Watts McNair, Late of "Connaught House," Mussooree, of the Indian Survey Department, the First European Explorer of Kafiristan

by J. E. Howard

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.