'Report on the Quetta-Seistan [Sistan] Trade Route, for the year 1900-1901' [‎10v] (20/32)

REPORT ON THE QUETTA-SEISTAN TRADE ROUTE FOR THE YEAR 1900-1901.
12
lealize tho latent possibilities which exist in the N ushki-Seistan trade route for
bringing about a change in the political outlook in Persia. Prior to 1897 India
was cut off ^ from Persia as completely as China is from Japan. There was no
£k amadraft ” between the two countries, and Russia had entered on a policy which
had for its objective the complete subjugation of Khorasan and the overawing of
Afghanistan by means of military posts stationed along the Perso-Afghan frontier.
With the opening of the Nushki-Seistan trade route all this has been changed*
and the Persians are now awakening to the fact that the Indian Empire lies
immediately on their borders. The influence, which is being steadily radiated by
the Nushki-Seistan trade route, is making itself felt, not only in Khorasan* itself,
bnt elsewhere in Persia and Northern Afghanistan,! where our doings are closely
foliow r ed and discussed with eager interest in every bazar.
49. The second caravan w r hich passed through Saindak, during my stay
there, came from Birjand and belonged to a merchant also named A/-ha
Mohamed. The Birjandi mot with many complaints. He said that, unless 5 he
was supplied with bhoosaj at every stage, his camels would die. He grumbled
at the hardships which he said he had encountered on the road, to which he
ascribed the death of several of his camels, and he compared the Nushki-Seistan
trade route with the Kirman-Bandar Abbas road, much to the disadvantage of
the former. In short, he found fault with everything. To Agha Mohamed’s
strictures I replied by asking him whether it was a fact that the camels, he
referred to, had died during the month he was halted in Seistan, and on his reply
ing in the affirmative, I pointed out that on the Birjand-Bandar Abbas road
there was a stretch of 180 miles of desert where neither water, bhoossa, fuel or
camel-grazing was to be obtained which necessitated caravans, using this road,
engaging special transport to carry their supplies at great expense. Mv
experience has satisfied me that, so long as camels receive in winter a small
daily allowance of ardawa, bhoosa is a luxury with which they can very well
dispense. Agha Mohamed apparently found this out for himself, for on mv "return
from Seistan I learnt that he had not availed himself of the supplies of bhoosa
which had been laid out for him at many of the stagcs.§
50. Returning to Saindak on the 12th Pebruary, I marched from thence to
Killa Robat, Koh-i-Malik Siah, and after a few days’ halt on the frontier, I
continued my journey to Nasratabad, the capital of Seistan, w hich W'as reached
on the 28th February. I found that the trans-frontier section of the caravan road,
that is to say, the section between Killa Robat and Pusht-i-Dasht, the first
village caravans strike in inhabited Seistan, has been much improved since I
passed over it last year. At Hurmak, the western terminus of the katcha road,
a dak System of postal communication used in Moghul India and later by the East India Company. chowki, which is much appreciated by travellers and caravans, has been
built, and at Nawar Chair, 22 miles from Hurmak, and at Chah Mohamed Raza
on the Asak plain, 8 miles out of Pusht-i-Dasht, Major Trench has erected new
posts and stored them with supplies. My journey to Nasratabad was unevent
ful : the only difficulty experienced w^as between Pusht-i-Dasht and Nasratabad,
a twenty-one mile march, which it took me tw r o days to cover ow ing to the road
being intersected, at intervals of every few’ yards, by irrigation channels || filled
wdth w ater and so deep that my camels negociated them with difficulty.*!
51. I take this opportunity of referring to the customs post which Monsieur
Caistaigne, Director-General of Customs in Khorasan, proposes stationing a t
Hurmak. Hurmak is in Persian territory, of this there is no question, yet lam
opposed to Persian customs guards being stationed therefor the ’ followino-
reasons. First and foremost, the post can prove of little value to the Persian Cus^
toms Department, for caravans wishing to avoid Hurmak can do so very easilv
by leaving the caravan road at either Kirtaka, Lashkar-i-Ab, or Killa Robat,
* Is it too much to suppose that the reductions which the Russians have recently made in the strength of their
called quarantine stations in Northern Khorasan arc traceable to the influence of the Nushki-Seistan trade route n/i*
to a fear that we may lay claim to equal military rights in Khorasan ?— F. W. ana
f W hatever our future policy in Afghanistan is to be, it is well to remember that Seistan is the pivot on which
em Afghanistan rests.— F. W. »iucn west-
X Chopped straw.— F. W.
§ Some of the complaints which I receive regarding the trade route are frivolous in the extreme. Khan Balinrhm
Hussain Bakhsh of Multan complained that he had been much jolted on the march up while sitting in his camel
Ivajawa, a matter which is probably as attributable to the camel he rode on as to the road itself— F. W.
|| Major Trench bridged all these channels over several times, but on finding that the Seistanis made new cuts as
last as he built bridges, he came to the conclusion that it was useless attempting to keep the road open. F. TV.
The only camel I lost in the course of my tour was lost while crossing one of these irrigation cuts. F. TV.