File 2976/1916 Pt 2 'Persia Bunder-Abbas-Kerman telegraph & road Bushire-Shiraz road' [‎134r] (265/294)

“A
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1 <1.
I quite agree that a line of telegraph from Saidabad
to Shiraz through hertz would afford a useful alternative means
if communication to that existing with Shiraz via Ispahan and
is one such as I advocated in one of my notes some years ago, viz,,
that of 7th January, 1914, The direct connection of Saidabad
with ¥eriz by wire would be difficult owing to the interposition of
a Kavir or salt swamp to the west of the former. The swamp is
thus described in the Route Book (Routes in Persia, Vol.III, Page 74)*
• x -.x. ."T* 16 P la 4? ver y barren and gradually resolves
itself into a salt desert. At IQi miles the edge of the kavir
is reached. The route now lies over a hard smooth path, worn
in the otherwise soft, rotten soil; in rainy weather the kavir
becomes impassable and the whole tract a mere morass or bog.
Further on the path lies for!while throudi a de£p layer of loose
salt, and then the loose salt gives way to a sheet of the same
substance, hard and highly crystallized, and not yielding to the
tread of a horse, though at first only one or two inches in
thickness; beneath this is brine, mud and water. The length
from north to south is reported to be some 24 miles; but to the
south-wast it spreads out into a very wide expanse. Its breadth
at the part where the road crosses is about six miles. At
about 20 miles the road runs again on the hard plain."
but qn alignment from ^eriz to connect with the line we are about
to construct at a point southward of the swamp can be selected^
farom which point an additional wire erected on the posts of the
new line would complete electrical communication between the two
places. The attached diagram illustrates my meaning.
1st August, 1918.