'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia: About 1889-1890' [‎672r] (1364/1486)

GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH-WEST PERSIA.
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in the neighbourhood of Shushter and Earn Hormuz. All these products
are only at present turned out in scanty volume, and there is not one
among them whose annual output might not be many times multiplied
were communication rendered simultaneously more easy and more secure.
Secondly: there would in time be a large increase of population in
the districts affected. The population of Persia has been wofully
diminished by the neglect and breakdown of the water-system upon
which it depended. But in this corner of the Shah’s dominions, and in
this alone, nature has not stinted the most generous supplies; and the
plains over which the traveller may now roam for hours without
encountering a single human soul, ought under altered conditions to
teem with busy life and industry.
Thirdly—and this is a consideration which specially affects ourselves
—the opening of this route, if vigorously carried out, should result in
an enormously increased import into Persia of British and Anglo-Indian
goods. As it is, the import trade of the whole of Southern Persia is
almost exclusively in British hands. Steamers of two British or Indian
companies run weekly from Bombay to Busrah, and there is also a direct
though irregular service between Busrah and London. The cities of
Southern and Central Persia, as far north as Ispahan, already derive the
bulk of their luxuries, and almost the whole of their clothing, from
Manchester or Bombay; and each fresh town, wo may even say each
new village, that is brought into communication with the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. ,
will thereby bo drawn into the mesh of the Lancashire cotton spinner
or the Hindu artisan.
Fourthly : should the line thus opened be succeeded at any time by
a railway, the returns from passenger traffic would constitute no mean
item. Asiatics generally are childishly fond of railway travelling; and
the Asiatics of Persia, in particular, are addicted to immense journeys,
extending over months of time, in order to gratify their pious desire to
gaze upon the last resting-place of some departed saint. When they
have reached the holy spot and have paid the becoming devotions, they
enjoy what in England is vulgarly described as a spree ; after which they
return home in the odour of accomplished sanctity, and are known ever
after as Hajis if they have been to Mecca, as Meshedis if to Meshed, or as
Kerbelais if to Kerbela. I am a Meshedi and a Kerbolai myself, though
I confess to being still a stranger both to the turbulent sweets of initia
tion and to the consecrated joys of reminiscence. A railway running
between the Kanin and Teheran would carry many thousands of such
pilgrims to Kum, to Kerbela, to Najaf, to Kazimein, to Samara, and even
in the direction of Mecca itself—all of them shrines of extreme sanctity
and popularity. It would thus in time be supported by the superstition
against which it might at first have to contend.
Such is the commercial geography of south-west Persia, and sue
are the advantages, both to Persia and to Great Britain, that may be