'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎225] (262/360)

TO KUHAK AND THE FRONTIER COMMISSION 225
example, the Fast of Ramazan with far greater strictness
than do the civilised Persians who laugh at them.
We reached Kuhak on February 24th, having accom
plished the distance of six hundred miles from Kerman in
forty days, almost a record journey with camels, when it is
remembered that a great part of our way had lain through
desert, and that we had had to carry supplies of every
sort.
The servants were greatly excited at the prospect of
joining the Feringhee camp, and we noticed that they one
and all became titled, evidently with the idea of impressing
the Hindustani domestics whom they were about to meet.
They no longer called one another by their plain, un
varnished names as formerly, but added such terms of
honour as Beg, Masktadi, or Sultan, never reflecting that in
all probability the Indians would not be able to understand
the significance of their dignities.
We ourselves were hardly less excited at the thought of
congenial English society, after having been so many
months away from civilisation; and it was with much
delight that we saw the gleam of white tents on the plateau
above the wide bed of the Mashkid River, and were
hospitably welcomed by Colonel (now Sir Thomas) Holdich
and his staff.
Kuhak itself is a prettily situated village among palm-
groves and running streams, with a mud fort on the spur
of the hillside. The houses are either square mud hovels
with holes for door and windows and thatched with palm-
leaves, or koutuks, i.e. dwellings composed entirely of palm-
leaf thatch on a framework of boughs.
It was from here that the work of the Frontier Com
mission was to begin, as the little district of Kuhak was
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