'Report on the Preliminary Survey of the Route for the Central Persia Telegraph Line' [‎76r] (156/300)

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General Summary.
To the majority of travellers in Persia, the country from Bam to Besan
would prove a novelty, while to those with Indian experience a striking re
semblance would be found to the “districts ’* of our Eastern Empire. It is no
longer the monotonous, barren plain, so often met with in Persia, but a green,
thickly wooded, rich, fertile, and well-populated tract of country that is
traversed. Cultivated ground appears on all sides with a superabundance of
water, but when one sees the primitive methods adopted in cultivating, and
the constant fear the people have that too lucrative a harvest will probably
mean an enhanced rent, one cannot but think how very different the result
would be were this tract of rich soil in other hands.
To take the stages separately, it would be difficult to find a country more
ideally suitable for a telegraph line than the 18 miles from Bam to Vakeelabad.
Gradually descending over a fine gravelly plain, the traveller is accompanied
throughout the march by a large stream of sweet clear water, whose banks are
fringed with willows and young palms, tamarisk and tall grass. Vakeelabad
is on the verge of the low jungle of Nermasher, a jungle of mimosa and
wild plum, where the tamarisk is no longer a bush but a fine tree of gray-green
foliage—a rest for one’s eyes, and here, too, numerous francolin find excellent
cover in the thick undergrowth, the tout ensemble reminding one strongly of the
wooded districts of Sind. The road through this jungle is a mere track, turn
ing and twisting in every direction, passing many little hamlets, with their
adjacent cultivation, and at times traversing a natural clearing of hard
gravelly soil. Sweet water is everywhere abundant, and supplies in limited
quantities can be procured at almost all of the many villages passed en route.
Whilst Vakeelabad occupies the western edge of the jungle just described,
Began may be said to lie on the eastern extremity. I was disappointed in
Began, which I hoped would be a town something like Bam, instead of only
possessing some 100 houses—a mere village, in fact; but the chief of many
other hamlets clustered all around, the whole district boasting of some
hundreds of kanats of sweet water and a rich produce.
Two days were spent in Regan in purchasing running camels for our
servants, in replenishing our forage for the 10 desert stages to Khasb, and in
procuring guides and an escort.
"S
b 7—34