File 1569/1913 'Trans-Persian Railway' [‎233v] (477/594)

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Practically all the biggest towns of Persia are on our proposed line, except Tabriz,
with 200,000, and Meshed, about 100,000. ,
By giving up our alignment and adopting the Greenway alignment we would lose
Yezd, Kerman, and Bampur, with alout 135,000 town population, and gam only Shiraz
with 30,000 to 40,000 population. .
So far about the towns. . „ > r i* t t
As regards the country, the position is still worse, as Greenway s line from Ispahan
to Shiraz and Bunder Abbas would run through a series of mountain ranges with none
but nomadic population, whereas our proposed line from Kashan to Kerman goes over
Thn^population of the Kerman district alone is given by Consular Report No. 4986
as 1,500,000, the whole of which must be taken as practically settled.
The Consular Report No. 5033 on Bunder Abbas shows that the greater part of the
exports from Bunder Abbas come from the Kerman district, which is the most industrial
part of Southern Persia.
Speaking generally, the idea of connecting Ispahan with the sea through bhiraz
and Bunder Abbas seems to me rather ill-conceived. It is much shorter connected with
Mohammerah via Shuster, the route from Ispahan to Shuster being shorter than that
from Ispahan to Shiraz, and Shuster being on the proposed Greenway railway line
Mohammerah-Khoremabad as well as on the River Karun.
From the above you will see that from the point of view of the needs of Persia and
of the railway itself there are no advantages gained by substituting the more tortuous
alignment of Greenway for the straight alignment proposed by us.
Chahbar via Bunder Abbas—You will remember that in their first scheme the
Russians did not intend at all to touch any points on the shore, but proposed to take
the line across the interior of Baluchistan to join the Indian railways at Nushki. It
was because of the objection that such scheme has met with here that it was abandoned
and the Chahbar alignment was chosen instead. A glance at the Admiralty map of the
ports in the Arabian Sea and in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. will show you the reason for that. In
Bunder Abbas steamers have to anchor more than 2 miles from the shore. This is what
“ Lloyds Register ” says about this port:—
“ An open roadstead. Vessels load and discharge by lighters. There is a depth of
17 feet of water available in the port at L.W.O.S.T.”
Surely this is not a port that can be used by a great transcontinental line. There are
only two bays in Persia that offer all the advantages of a good natural harbour. These
are Chahbar and Gwatar. The latter being on the Persian-Kabat frontier we have not
considered it, but in Chahbar the depth of water near the shore is sometimes about
4'5 and 6 fathoms. With comparatively little expenditure Chahbar can be turned into
a very good port.
As regards the country between Kerman and Chahbar, which some are trying to
represent as of no commercial interest and devoid of population, I have already
mentioned above that the Consular Report No. 4986 gives the population of that
district as 1,500,000 (out of the total population of Persia of 9,000,000, of which
2,500,000 must be taken as nomadic population, see the “ Statesman’s Year Book.”)
The following extract from Chamber’s “Encyclopaedia, 1901” (vol. viii, p. 64), may
interest you :—
“ Although so much of Persia is desert some parts of the country are of
exceeding fertility and beauty ; the immense valleys—some of them 100 miles in length
between the various ranges of the Kerman Mountains—abound with the rarest and
most valuable vegetable productions.”
Surely this cannot be called a desert country, and where it is desert, as in some
parts to the north-east from Yezd and Kerman, there are mines of nickel, cobalt,
antimony, mauganese, and borax (see “ Stateman’s Year Book ”).
Again, the climatic conditions are all in favour of Chahbar as against Bunder
Abbas, the former being open to refreshing south-west winds, whereas the latter is a
typical garmisir with a hot and very depressing summer from April to October (see
“ Encyclopaedia Britannica,” 9th edition).
A. GOUKASSOF.