The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎214v] (99/172)

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THE PERSO-BALUCH BOUNDARY.*
By Colonel T. H. HOLDICH, R.E., C.B.
South-west and south of the district with which Captain McMahon
has been dealing, lies a somewhat remarkable country which has long
been a riddle to geographers and ethnographers alike, the mysteries of
which have lately been unravelled in connection with boundary demar
cation. Captain McMahon has described the watershed The boundary between adjacent drainage basins. which traverses
the desert south of the Ilelmand, shutting off that great river system
from the Mashkel lake, or Hamun, district further south. This great
basin of Mashkel covers a very large area of varied country, and
includes the drainage from those mountains to the west which now
form the Persian frontier, as well as that of other mountains to the
south, which form the northern outposts of Maknin. About the edge
of the Hamun (which is a salt swamp in dry weather and a shoreless
sea in times of flood), on the western side of it, are a few scattered date
groves, inadequately cultivated, ragged, and unproductive, which from
time immemorial have been a bone of contention between the wild and
lawless Damani tribes of Eastern Persia and the desert-bred Rekis of
Ealuchistan. Raids and reprisals, blood feuds, and wayside murders
have been hatched and bred in those wretched date-groves, until matters
had reached an acute fighting stage, when our Government stepped in
and decided to have a Persian boundary as well as an Afghan boundary.
Besides the date groves there were other political matters of dispute
which had stood over since the historic days of the Seistan Boundary
Commission, a quarter of a century ago, and which had proved at the
time to be nuts too hard for that Commission to crack. Thus it fell out
that whilst Captain McMahon was busy with a section of the Afghan
boundary south of the Helmand, I was acting as her Majesty’s Commis
sioner within a few days’ ride of him on another and totally distinct
Commission, the basis of which was a treaty between the late Shah and
our English Foreign Office.
In connection with this treaty there wore about 300 miles of
boundary to be defined, extending from the Malik Siah Koh in a
south-easterly direction to Kohuk, on the Mashkel river, and there
were but two or three months in which to define them. The season
was well advanced before political negotiations were closed, and it was,
in fact, on this very day, February 22, exactly a year ago, that the
British and Persian Commissions met on the banks of the Mashkel
river, after having travelled, the one from Karachi by sea to Gwadur,
and thence across the backbone of Makran to the Mashkel; and the
other from far-off Teheran in the north-west of Persia, in the space of
about one month. *
* Read at the Royal Geographical Society, February 22, 1897.