His account of this journey was published in the Royal Geographical Society's Journal in a paper which gave, Sir Roderick Murchison said, for the first time accurate information about the diversion of the Yellow River.

For many weeks Elias travelled in constant apprehension of attack; he had scarcely any sleep; and when he reached the Siberian frontier, the Russian officers stared at him as if he had dropped from the sky.

Elias received the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (26 May 1873), and on the recommendations of Rawlinson and Sir Bartle Frere, his services were retained by the government of India.

[4] Nominated an extra attaché to the Calcutta foreign office on 20 March 1874, Elias was appointed in September 1874 assistant to the resident at Mandalay; and shortly afterwards second in command of the overland mission to China, which turned back, owing to the murder of Augustus Raymond Margary.

[4] In September 1885, under orders from the Indian government, Elias left Yarkund for the Pamirs and Upper Oxus, and, in the course of an arduous journey, he made a route survey of six hundred miles from the Chinese frontier to Ishkashim, determined points and altitudes on the Pamirs, and visited the confluence of the Murghab and Panja rivers, solving the problem as to which was the upper course of the Oxus.

[4] From November 1888 to February 1889, he was on special duty in connection with the Sikkim Expedition, and in October 1889 took command of a mission to report on the political geography and condition of the Shan States on the Indo-Siamese frontier.

[4] While on furlough in 1895, in collaboration with Mr. E. D. Ross, he brought out an English version of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, by Mirza Haidar of Kashgar, cousin to the Emperor Baber, revising the translation and supplying an introduction and notes embodying much of his wide knowledge of the history and geography of Central Asia.