'Administration Reports 1905-1910' [‎38v] (81/616)

60 ADMINISTRATION REPORT ON THE PERSIAN GU^F POLITICAL
* —
and other relations, male and female, to a few men who work their export
to the Arab Coast. One notorious dealer in Biyaban district and Persian
Baluchistan is Mir Barkat Khan ; the children are supposed to be shipped by
twos and threes in native boats from the small Mekran Coast ports. It is
reported that these children are most carefully coached beforehand to abscond
the moment that they are ill-treated to one of our Consulates or Agencies and
there claim their freedom. The following tabular statement gives the
numbers manumitted at this Consulate, or through its good offices. The figures
shown against Lingah are of those who have taken refuge at the British
Agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. there and whose cases have now to be referred to this Consulate for the
grant of manumission papers.
Place.
Manumitted
dibect by
Consulate.
Hanumitted aftee eepebencb to the
Kaeguzabi.
Slaves belong
ing to other
than Perdan
subjects.
Slaves belong
ing to Persian
subjects,
Africans,
etc.
Slaves of
Persian ration
ality with
Persian
masters.
Total.
Bunder Abbas
Lingah
•
11
1
47
20
26
84
21
Totals ,
12
67
26
105
Thus 105 of those who took refuge at this Consulate were manumitted, a
few only being refused after their cases had been carefully enquired into, and
their number does not amount to more than 6 or 8.
Telegraph. —The most important event of the year was the connection by
telegraph of Bunder Abbas with the rest of the world, the work being carried
out by the Indo-European Telegraph Department for the Persian Govern
ment. On the 14th October 1905 the I. G.T. S. Fatric Stewart laid the
first section of the cable across the strait between H^njam Island and Deristan
on the south side of Kishm Island, and then, after dropping material for the
land line across Kishm Island at Suza, she arrived at Kishm town on the 16tb
October. On the following day the vessel came over to Bunder Abbas and
laid the cable from Bunder Abbas to Kishm joining up with the shcre-end
at Kishm, laid on the previous day, late in the afternoon. Work on the land-
line across Kishm Island and on the various cable-houses was pushed forward
until the line was complete from the Henjam Station to the cable house at
Bunder Abbas, when for the first time through connection over the wire
with Henjam became possible on the evening of the 31st December 19C5.
Subsequently it was found advisable to shift the cable-house further
inland ; on this work being undertaken on the 19th January 1906, and partially
carried out, it was forcibly stopped by the local authorities two days later,
without any definite orders and apparently on the initiative and at the instiga
tion of M. Stas, the Director of Customs, No reference was made to the
British Consulate or to the Telegraph Superintendent in charge of the work;
after considerable telegraphic correspondence with His Majesty's Charg^
d Affaires at Tehran the matter remained in abeyance until the 12th March
1906 when the Persian authorities without any previous intimation suddenly
commenced works on a new Telegraph Office on a most unsuitable site within
a few yards of the condemned cable-house and directly across the intended
line of the cable. In spite of urgent local protests and the assurances of the
Central Government at Tehran to His Majesty's Charg6 d'Affaires work
was continued well into April when it eventually stopped as the result of
British representations. There is only too good reason to believe that the
insistence and energy with which work was continued by the Director of