William Watts McNair, who was born on the 13th September, 1849, joined
the great Indian Survey Department in September, 1867, when he was
only eighteen years old, and served the Government of Her Majesty the
Queen and Empress of India faithfully unto the day of his death, on
the 13th of August, 1889. In the official proceedings or notes of the
Surveyor-General of India, for August, 1889, will be found the
following more than merely formal notice of the services of the
deceased officer of a great but scarcely sufficiently recognised
scientific department of the magnificent Indian Empire of Her Majesty
the Queen-Empress. "The Surveyor-General deeply regrets to announce
the death of Mr. W.W. McNair, Surveyor, 3rd grade, from fever
contracted at Quetta while attached to the Baluchistan Survey Party.
He was granted leave to proceed to Mussooree, where he died on 13th
August. Mr. McNair joined the department on the 1st September, 1867,
and was posted to the Rajputana Topographical Party. The first twelve
years of his service were passed on topographical duty with this party
under Major G. Strahan, R.E., and in the Mysore Party under Majors G.
Strahan and H.R. Thuillier, R.E. From the very first he showed special
aptitude as a plane-tabler, and was soon recognised in the department
as an accomplished surveyor. In the autumn of 1879 he was selected to
accompany the Khyber Column of the Afghan Field Force, and was present
with that force during the severe fighting that occurred before Kabul
in the winter of 1879-80, and the subsequent defence of Sharpur.
Whilst in Afghanistan he mapped a very large portion of hitherto
unknown country, including the Lughman Valley and approaches to
Kafiristan, and the Logar and Wardak Valleys to the south of Kabul. He
explored the Adrak-Badrak Pass with a native escort, and made himself
acquainted with the route from Kabul to Jalalabad, _viâ_ Lughman,
which was explored by no other European officer. At the close of the
war he was attached to the Kohat Survey, under Major Holdich, R.E.,
and was specially employed in the risky work of mapping the frontier
line from Kohat to Bannu, including a wide strip of trans-frontier
country, and much of the hitherto unmapped Tochi Valley. On the
break-up of the Kohat Survey he was temporarily employed on geodetic
work in one of the Astronomical parties, but was re-transferred to the
frontier when the Baluchistan parties were formed. His chief work in
connection with Baluchistan has been carrying a first-class series of
triangles from the Indus, at Dehra Grhazi Khan to Quetta, which
occupied him to the close of his career. His ability as an observer,
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
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.