Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 637 



his return to England in 1872 was occupied in preparing 

 maps of Persia at the India Office^ a considerable part of the 

 data having been derived from his own observations. He 

 returned to India in 1875, and filled in succession a number 

 of important posts, amongst them being those of Principal of 

 Mayo College, A j mere. Chief Political Oflficer to the Kan- 

 dahar Field Force and Resident in Kandahar, Officiating 

 Agent to the Governor- General in Baluchistan, Acting Resi- 

 dent at Hyderabad in the Deccan, Resident in Kashmir, 

 Baroda, and Mysore, and finally again Agent to the Governor- 

 General in Baluchistan. For his services he was made Com- 

 panion of the Star of India in 1879, and Knight Commander 

 in 1882. 



The mere record of the posts held by Sir O. St, John 

 is sufficient to show the value attached to his services by the 

 Government of India, and his success, both in the high diplo- 

 matic appointments he filled during the last fifteen years 

 of his life and in his earlier career in Persia, was partly due 

 to his remarkable knowledge of Persian, the diplomatic lan- 

 guage of so large a part of Asia, but still more to the esteem 

 in which he was held, both by Asiatics and Europeans. He 

 possessed in an eminent degree firmness and tact. 



Few men have led a more active life, and few have passed 

 unscathed through a greater variety of adventures. At 

 Kandahar he escaped unhurt from the attack of a fanatical 

 Afghan, who fired a pistol at him at so close quarters that 

 his horse's hair was singed by the explosion. He owed his 

 safety on the disastrous day of Maiwand to good horseman- 

 ship and a good horse, for he had to make his way through a 

 cloud of the enemy's cavalry to the protection of the British 

 artillery. Even more remarkable was the fact of his being 

 engaged, at different times, but at equally close quarters, with 

 a lion and a tiger, and escaping without a scratch. In the 

 one case a lion leaped on his horse as he was riding, unat- 

 tended, in the dusk of the evening, through the oak forest 

 near Shiraz, in Southern Persia. The encounter with the 

 tiger took place in the N.W. Provinces of India. The animal 

 had been attacked and desperately wounded by St. John and 



