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.

Some of his exploits were remarkable, as for instance when he explored
the Adrak Badrak pass leading from the Lughman valley to Jugdalak with
no military escort whatever, trusting only to the tender mercies of an
"aboriginal" guard. He thus made himself acquainted with every detail
of the direct road from Kabul, _viâ_ the Kabul river, to Jalalabad; and
with him our practical acquaintance with that important route has
passed away. No sooner had he left Afghanistan than he was attached to
the frontier party then working in the Kohat district; there he was
Major Holdich's right-hand man. If there was a specially hard frontier
nut to be cracked, McNair's powers of assimilating himself to Pathan