loid people on the north-east border of Bengal, who greatly interested him, and his account of their quaint manners and customs, of the character of the country. and of its megalithic monuments, showed the bent of his studies.
In 1843 he came home on leave to marry his cousin Anna Maria (d. 1875), daughter of General Martin White of the Bengal army. From 1843 to 1849 he served with a group of officers, who all afterwards attained distinction (among then Napier, Durand, Baird, Smith, Cautley, W. E. Baker, W. W. Greathed, and R. Strachey), in the restoration and development of the irrigation system of the Moguls in the North-West Provinces. His labours were interrupted by the Sikh wars of 1845-6 and 1848-9, in both of which he took part. He was at home on furlough from 1849 to 1851. and during that period lectured at the Scottish Military Academy. While thus engaged, he wrote a volume on 'Fortification.' Professionally it may still be read with profit, while its interesting biographical notices and portraits of famous engineers completely differentiate it from the ordinary technical treatises. A French translation appeared in Paris in 1859. His warm regard for Henry Dundas Trotter [q. v.], then recently returned from his expedition to the Niger, led Yule to take an interest in the slave-trade controversy, and his able pamphlet, 'The African Squadron Vindicated' (London, 1850), passed through more than one edition.
Having early gained the confidence and regard of Lord Dalhousie, the governor-general of India, he was in 1855 appointed under-secretary to the newly formed public works department. Besides irrigation, this department was entrusted with the direction of the great scheme for railways which Lord Dalhousie was urging forward. The railway scheme entailed from its novelty much labour and anxiety. From this work Yule was temporarily detached as secretary to Colonel (afterwards Sir Arthur) Phayre's friendly embassy to Burmah, and to act as its chronicler. His report to government, afterwards recast, and published in 1858 as 'A Narrative of the Mission to Ava in 1855,' was his first publication to attract wide attention. It is mainly illustrated by his own pencil. The confidence in Yule shown by Lord Dalhousie was continued to him in very full measure by the succeeding governor-general, Lord Cunning. Yule retired from the service in 1863, and was created C.H. in the following year.
Partly on account of his wife's health, I investigate the histories of old Italian missionaries and travellers in Central Asia, he took up his residence at Palermo. In 1863 he brought out for the Hakluyt Society 'Mirabilia descripta. The Wonders of the East' by Jordanus, and in 1866 'Cathay, and the Way thither' (2 vols.), containing, besides biographical notices of old travellers and many of their curious letters and reports, a fund of information on medieval Asia, with a full and well-digested accounts of the intercourse from early times between China and the west. Yule's famous editions of 'Marco Polo' appeared in 1871 and earned him the gold medal of the Geographical Society of Italy, and later the founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society. The book is a storehouse of curious and profound research, and placed the editor by common consensus in the first rank of geographers. A remarkable feature in Yule's work is the skill with which he unravels the most confused narratives of uncritical and credulous medieval writers, and the satisfaction he feels in rehabilitating, when possible, their character for accuracy. An enlarged edition appeared in 1875. A new edition of Yule's 'Marco Polo' is now (1900) in preparation by Professor Cordier of Paris.
Yule returned to England after his first wife's death in 1875, and was placed on the Indian council, from which he retired shortly before his death in 1889. His presence there was much valued, not only for his literary services, but from his habit of viewing all questions on their own merits, rather than by the light of expediency or of procedures.
He married secondly, in 1877, Mary Wilhelmina (d. 26 April 1881), second daughter of Fulwar Skipwith of the Bengal civil service, but she died four years afterwards. At this time his own health was beginning to break, but his record of work hardly diminished. Two important works date from these years, 'Hobson Johnson, a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases' (1886), the terms dealt with being culled not only from books but from diaries and East India Company's court letters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and copiously illustrated by a quaint medley of research collected during his miscellaneous reading, and stored till wanted in his unfailing memory. It is dedicated in graceful Latin to his brother. Sir George. His last work for the Hakluyt Society was the 'Diary of Sir William Hedges' (1887), full of curious details of the inner working of the old and new East India companies, comprising incidentally the strange history of Governor Pitt, of Pitt diamond celebrity (see Pitt, Thomas 1653-1726], The 'Encyclopedia Britannica'
