The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎215r] (100/172)

THE PERSO-BALUCH BOUNDARY.
417
Now you must not allow the desolate blankness of the map of those
regions to mislead you. For many years, whilst acting as superin
tendent of the Baluchistan Surveys, my attention had been directed
to this corner of Asia; and chiefly by the agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. of well-trained
native assistants, not only all Makran and the borderland in dispute,
but very much of Fastern Persia too, had been well reconnoitred and
fairly surveyed. I should emphasize the word surveyed. I do not
mean that individuals had merely passed along a line of country, con
tenting themselves with leaving a red trail over a blank white space
as the map-record of their travels, but that sound square mapping,
with no detail of importance omitted within its limits, was rendered
up at the end of the season s work. Thus it happened that we possessed
excellent geographical mapping based on triangulation A surveying technique in which the position of a network of points is determined by creating a series of triangles between them and measuring at least two of the internal angles and one side length. of the whole
of this region, and that it was with completed maps in our hands
that we entered on boundary negotiations. In my Persian colleague
I found a gentleman whose previous connection with the Seistan Com
mission had given him a most reasonable and delightful confidence in
the accuracy of British surveyors. Thus we were able to get the
300 miles of boundary settled and demarcated without any waiting on
preliminary survey processes, and by the beginning of May, ere the
hot-weather blasts had made that sun-stricken land unbearable, and
before the death of the late Shah, we were back again in India with
our work complete.
Of the incidents and the strange experiences of that remote com
mission there is no time now to speak at length; I can only say that
the race hatred which exists between the desert-born Baluch and the
Persian “ gujjer ” (as they call him) was strong enough to give us a bad
quarter of an hour occasionally, and one could not but feel that the rapid
conclusion of negotiations was a merciful dispensation of Providence.
One can only look back to the history of the weary Seistan boundary-
struggle twenty-five years ago, or to the well-remembered experience of
the yet more protracted boundary proceedings that were rendered famous
at Panjdeh, and note with satisfaction the changes that time has wrought
in demarcation procedure—and wrought chiefly by the aid of a better
official appreciation of the advantage of correct geographical knowledge.
You will at least understand that my survey assistant, Colonel
Wahab (who only very lately had been associated with me in a success
ful struggle to carry the triangulation A surveying technique in which the position of a network of points is determined by creating a series of triangles between them and measuring at least two of the internal angles and one side length. of India across the Himalayas into
the Pamirs, and thus effected the first scientific junction between Russia
and India), found no such scientific achievement ready- to his hand in
this remote Baluch wilderness. We gathered in little new geography-;
yet, as the geography of this region is a comparative blank in our maps
and must be new to many of you, I will say- a few words about it. I
must pass over the strange conformation of these western hills, along the
watershed The boundary between adjacent drainage basins. of which the Persian boundary now runs, and from which a
No. IV.— April, 1897.] 2 f