ADiMINISTEATIVE REPORT XLI 



northwestern emi^ii-e from Bombay to Kashmir, and 

 fi"om the Punjab to Nepal, laying the foundation for a 

 broad yet precise geographic and ethnologic education; 

 and some of the lectures of even the latest years of his 

 life drew inspiration and significant detail from the 

 researches enlivening these early campaigns. He saw 

 service also in Farther India, Borneo, and the Philip- 

 pines, and after rising through a lieutenancy to the rank 

 of captain was transferred to Africa. Here he won the 

 Egyptian medal, and his skill as military expert and 

 organizer attracted such attention that after his return to 

 his regiment in India he was recalled and promoted to a 

 colonelc}^ at the express request of the Khedive. 



In Africa, as in India, Colonel Hilder seized every 

 opportunity for scientific research ; but his tenure in the 

 Egyptian army was cut short by the terrible experience 

 of a sand-storm, which so injured his eyesight that he 

 decided to abandon a military career. Coming to Amer- 

 ica on his recovery, Colonel Hilder met again the conta- 

 gion of military spirit stimulated by our civil war, and 

 did special work of importance in the Engineer Corps, 

 but held so firmly to his election of a i^eaceful life as to 

 decline an American commission. In the later sixties he 

 became the international representative of a small -arms 

 manufactory, and spent fifteen years chiefly in travel 

 through the several Spanish -American countries; and 

 during this period he acquired an extended and intimate 

 acquaintance with languages and peoples, as well as with 

 national leaders and policies. Impressed by the oppor- 

 tunities for international business presented by the 

 actual and prospective republics of Spanish America, he 

 established a house in Chicago, only to be ruined by the 

 fire of 1871; later he combined business enterprises in 

 St Louis and Mississippi City with notable researches 

 in the archeology of the Mississippi valley. Unhappily 

 pursued by conflagrations, he turned to research and 

 publication, making important contributions to the 

 projectors of the Pan-American Railway and the Bureau 

 of American Republics. 



