Manuscript of Persia and the Persian Question (Continued) [‎26r] (51/690)

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With ancient history, and with the disputed questions of the Ulai _
Euhcus, the Coprates, the Cyoaspes, the Pasitigris, and their identity
with the modern river-beds^I shall not 4rouhlo myself or juu. The
channels, and even the entire course of the rivers of Susiana where
Irom time to time great masses of snow-fed water are suddenly propelled
through a sandy and friable soil, and where vast artificial irrigation
works have sometimes reversed the dispositions of nature—have shifted
frequently and irrecognisably. Unless we adopt this explanation, which
charity as well as nature recommends, we shall be forced to the con
clusion that the ancient chroniclers and geographers who dealt with
these rivers were a veiy muddle-headed set of people; a hypothesis to
which I am only inclined by the discovery that the majority of their
modern successors have been guilty of confusions at least as startling,
but over which the impulse of common impartiality tempts me equally
to draw a veil. J
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t ^ < # take up the history of the Karun rivo * o t
-A when it first concerns ourselves, and when its commercial advantage
began to be /^cognised, not by the British public, who are habitually
ill-informed, but by the few pioneers whose invariable fate it is to be
snubbed by their own generation and applauded by the next. ^
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w It was just fifty years -a^a-ihot the immense latent value of the
Karun trade route, as an avenue of expeditious approach to the great
cities and centres of grain cultivation in the west of Persia, and as an
opening more especially for British and Anglo-Indian commerce, was
first brought prominently before the attention of Englishmen bv the
united labours and writings of Sir H. Layard and Lieut. Selby.C^The
former of these explorers, from his intimate relations, both with
Mohammed TH,ki Khan, the great Bakhtiari chieftain, and with the
merchants of Shushter, was enabled to guarantee Persian reciprocity in
any such enterprise; and he penned at the same time a report to the
Home Government, and a letter to the Chamber of Commerce at Bombay,
urging the prompt utilisation of so favourable an opportunity. Political
convulsions in Persia frustrated the further prosecution of the design,
and it was not till thirty years later that the opening of the Karun
river to foreign commem^-Appuai'S to have-dieen made the subject of
formal official commu^fications between the Goverhlfrenia-al L Downi ng
Street and Teheran/\-Atsoa> seventeen years of diplomatic fencing, wri
^feint and counterfeint, and all the diversified tricks of the Oriental
ihool—in the course of which France at one time appeared as a
combatant in the arena, and all but carried off an exclusive concession
for the navigation of the river and the development of the surrounding
lands^)the matter was at .hi«t settled by a decree of the Shah, issued in
October 1888, by which me Karun river, as far as Ahwaz, was, subject
to certain somewhat vexatious conditions, opened to the mercantile
marine of the world.
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(ly8b far as I can ascertain, the ascents of the Karun river, by boat or steamer,
.... n -•— ..r isss were as follows:—
ss. Euphrates ns far as
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rpcorded by English travellers prior to the concession of 1888,
/Sin 1830, Colonel Chesney in a large Arab vessel.
In May 1831, Mr. Stocqueler in an Arab boat, as far as Wf
In September 1836, Major Estcourt and party in the
Ismailimh; in November 1836, as far as Ahwaz, and thence in a native boat to Buud-i-
Kir. . ..
In May and June 1841, Lieut. Selby in the ss. Nitocns as far as Ahwaz.
In February, March, and April 1842, Lieut. Selby and Sir A. H. Layard in the
s.g. Assyria as far as Shushter. . .
In March 1857, in the Anglo-Persian War, the s.s. Comet, Planet, and Assyria, under
Captain Rennie, with 300 men and three gunb oats in tow , as far as Ahwaz.
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