James Macdonald

Major General Sir James Ronald Leslie Macdonald (8 February 1862 – 27 June 1927) was a British engineer, explorer, military officer and cartographer. Born in the Madras Presidency, he was a balloon observer as a young man, surveyed for railways in British India and East Africa, explored the upper Nile region, commanded balloon sections during the Second Boer War and Boxer Rebellion and led the British expedition to Tibet in 1903–1904. Early career Macdonald was born on 8 February 1862 in Rajahmundry in the Madras Presidency, India, the son of Surgeon-Major James Macdonald (1828–1906) of Aberdeen and Margaret Helen Leslie née Collie (1841-1876); his younger sister was the Egyptologist and archaeologist Nora Griffith. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and the University of Aberdeen. He passed through the Royal Military Academy and was gazetted to the Royal Engineers in 1882. As a lieutenant, on 15 May 1885 Macdonald was appointed to the corps of Bengal Sappers and Miners, Torpedo service, Calcutta on special duty as a balloon photographer. He served in the Hazara campaign of 1888, and also working in the Indian railway organization. Macdonald had spent seven years in service in India and was in Bombay in 1891 ready to embark for England on leave when he was offered the job of Chief Engineer of "the proposed railway survey from Mombasa to the Victoria Nyanza". He accepted, and continued to England to find out what would be involved. In November 1891 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Uganda railway