The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎216r] (102/172)

THE PERSO-BALUCH BOUNDARY.
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discovery of a sea route to India and the turn of the Portuguese, and
with it the extinction of Makran as a highway to India, and its lapse
into a phase of darkness so profound that twenty years ago about as
much was known of it as we know of the darkest forests of Africa.
Xow again the light has broken on those rugged hills and palm-covered
valleys, and most of its dark places have been made plain.
The narrow fringe of sandy unprofitable shore which sets a northern
limit to the Arabian sea, is broken here and there by gigantic headlands
stretching seawards, and is backed by mountains for its entire length
until you approach the Dasht river, where the mountain system becomes
broken and recedes northwards. Here is the point where routes into
Persia strike inland. Here and there we find harbours formed by the
outlying headlands, which give protection to the fishing craft of the
coast, and support small townlets which are usually stations of
the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. telegraph service, and do a considerable trade in dried
and salted fish. Of the townlets Gwadur (which is an Arab possession,
owning the Sultan of Muskat as sovereign) is the principal; and from
Gwadur salt fish is exported to the west coast of India and sharks’ fins
to China. How such a trade can pay I do not pretend to say.
The fish industry which pervades the coast pervades the atmosphere
also. All the Makran coast stinks of fish, and all the Makrani people
live on fish. Dogs, cats, cattle, and even camels, eat fish. The old
Ichthyophagai of the Greeks are offensively predominant throughout
the coast districts ; and, strange to say, after all these centuries, the
old mystery of enchantment hangs over that coast still. I have been
taken to the enchanted island of Astola, where, even now, there dwells
a lovely, but most pernicious, mermaid, who turns men into fish, and
where, no doubt, most excellent use has been made of the mysterious
envelopment of the island by the pirate Meds, who used to bring the
crews of captured vessels here and murder them wholesale.
The roads from the coast inland are few and far between. They are
not good roads when you find them, for as they trend northward they
cross the axis of all chief ranges and ridges of the country. The hill
conformation is very peculiar, though closely allied to that which exists
on the frontier from the north-west of India (i.e south of Waziristan) to
the Arabian sea, and which continues again from Makran to Western
Persia. Close-packed, narrow, knife-edged ridges run parallel to each
other and to the coast, sometimes swelling into well-defined mountain
systems, sometimes dwindling into a mere display of sharp points,
emanating like sharks’ fins from the billowy plain, but always offering
the sharpest, stoniest, and most aggressive obstruction to the traveller
bound northward. It follows that between these ridges running east
and west, or following the trend of the coast as the coast itself shapes
a new course, there are long narrow valleys offering means of com
munication as good as that which crosses them is bad.
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