'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎213] (248/360)

THRO UGH THE DESER T TO BAMPUR AND PAHRA 213
to enter into treaty with its Governor, were thrown into
chains for the rest of their days.
It needed a strong and a long arm to keep the land
quiet, and, as the Assad-i-Dowleh had much difficulty
in quelling numerous petty raids on his frontier, which
for about a couple of hundred miles was an exceedingly
ill-defined line, the object of the present Boundary Com
mission was to assign the date-groves, the subject of
dispute, to their respective Governments.
Faraj is, in all probability, the same town which was
the capital of Baluchistan in Alexander the Great's day.
At the time of our visit it was merely a village of miser
able huts, the better sort, like huge beehives with a thick
palm-leaf thatch, topping their round mud walls ; while
the great majority were merely shanties made from the
palm-leaf matting. The Baluchis, as a race, were much
darker and smaller in build than the Persians, the type of
features Arab in the better class and frequently negroid
in the lower. The men looked picturesque in baggy
white trousers, over which they wore a long black or
white shirt, while a white cotton shawl was sometimes
wound as a turban round their skull-caps, or put over
the head in a way that a Lancashire lass wears her
shawl. The elder men sported a mass of greasy black
hair that had seldom known the discipline of a comb,
matted locks hanging over their shoulders, while their
long beards and moustaches had all the centre parts
plucked out in order to prevent the hair being rendered
unclean by drinking wine. The young men were great
dandies as regarded their coiffures, dragging their curls
forward to hang over their ears, and often cultivating
a specially long and well-greased one to droop over their