Major General Sir James Ronald Leslie Macdonald, KCSI, KCIE, CB, DL, FRGS (8 February 1862 – 27 June 1927) was a British engineer, explorer, military officer and cartographer.

[4] 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.

[4] 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".

[9] Macdonald encountered many difficulties in his survey of 27,000 miles of possible route for the railway including sickness, attacks by ants, bees, lions and elephants, formidable physical obstacles and hostile Africans.

[10] The survey's findings confirmed that the caravan route to the Great Rift Valley was the best path for the line, followed by the easiest gradient to be found over the Mau Escarpment and down to Lake Victoria.

They suggested that Kikuyuland would be a suitable place for whites to live, and their civilizing effect would drive out slavery, but the railway was needed to give access to the new colony.

[13] In May 1893 Macdonald was appointed Acting British Commissioner of the Uganda Protectorate by General Gerald Herbert Portal with directions to stay away from the internal affairs of Buganda.

Captain Herbert H. Austin would lead 300 men north to uncover the source of the Juba River, thought to be connected with Lake Rudolph.

In 1885 they were threatened by the forces of Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi whom Kitchener was now preparing to attack, and retreated south to Lake Albert.

[18] Macdonald spent the next seven months trying to suppress their mutiny, finally handing over responsibility for this task in May 1898 to troops that had been dispatched from India.

[20]After the mutiny was put down under the leadership of the Protectorate consul-general George Wilson CB, Macdonald recommended retaining a force of Indians in the country on the basis that the Sudanese troops could be useful, but only if there was an independent body of sepoys.

[4] He was next posted to South Africa, where he was responsible for introducing most of the new sections of balloon observers, which made a significant contribution to British progress in the Second Boer War.

Creeping artillery barrages supported infantry advances against entrenched opponents armed with rifles and machine guns, a technique later developed to the extreme during the First World War.

[29] Macdonald left in August 1900 to take up the command of the fourth Balloon section with the British imperial troops fighting the Boxer Rebellion in China.

[31] In October 1903 the strength of the mission's escort was brought up to a brigade with about 2,500 British and Indian troops under Macdonald, who had been temporarily promoted from Colonel to Brigadier-General.

[citation needed] He was instructed to avoid aggression and act in a strictly defensive role as the mission advanced into Tibet to Gyantse and occupied the Chumbi valley.

Macdonald then took half the force back 150 miles to New Chumbi to check communications and arrangements for supply, earning the nickname "Retiring Mac".

However, caution may have been justified by the extremely challenging terrain and climate, with logistical problems increasing exponentially as the supply chain lengthened.