"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎٣‎٣‎١] (١٧٨٢/٤٧٤)

(2m
331
the coast and suffered severely from the heat ; they left Kirman about
the l^th of June and made via Bampur, Qasrkand and Dashtyari for
Chahbar/where two of them, Captain Rittich and M. Palmgren, arrived
on the 27 th of June ; preceded on the 26th by the corpse of their com
panion, M. Iliin, who had succumbed to the heat j M. Palmgren, a Swede
by race and an elderly man, was much exhausted. The two unfortu
nate explorers were succoured by the British Telegraph officials at Chahbar
and eventually reached Masqat in safety in a native boat.
The expedition which carried out this extensive reconnaissance was
described by the Russian Consular officials in Persia as a " geographical
mission,'' but the head of it, M. Sakhanski, was referred to in the Russian
press as " Director of Persian Railways." Some doubt prevailed at the
time as to the nature of the Russian Government's connection with
the undertaking, but it was in part removed by later information which
came into the possession of His Majesty's Government in 1903. The ex
pedition was then proved to have been £t Railway Commission, charged
with ascertaining the best route for a Russian railway from Transcaucasia
across Persia to the sea ; and it was found that the leader of the Chahbar
party had been Captain P. A. Rittich of the Russian General Staff, the
author of a pamphlet on " Railways in Persia " which had made some
stir in Russia in the early part of 1900, when the Russian press was full
of Persian railway projects and was apprehensive lest the access of Russia
to the sea should be barred by a junction between a German railway to
Baghdad and the Indian railway system. It seemed that the Commission
---or at least Captain Rittich—had condemned the Bushehr and Bandar
'Abbas routes as ending in the Persian Gulf, where the power of Britain
was for naval reasons supreme, and at places which were incapable of con
version into ports, and that Captain Rittich had recommended the con
struction of a railway by way of Rasht, Qazvin, Tehran, Qum, Kashan,
Yazd, Kirman, Bam and Bampur to Chahbar Bay at an estimated cost of
£19,696,000 of which £1 ,575,000 was for the construction and armament
of a port at Chahbar. The fact that the railway could not be supported
by local, and must depend upon intercontinental, traffic had been clearly
realised ; and it had been proposed that special customs duties should be
applied in Persia—presumably after the establishment of exclusive influ
ence there by Russia— to prevent the railway from becoming subservient
to British commercial interests.
Chiefly no doubt with a view to the creation of solid interests in the The Russian
Persian Gulf, but partly perhaps with the object of providing colourable gation and
grounds for political interference there, resort was next had by Russia to ^
subsidised commercial enterprises. The first hint that Russian commercial other Ruasian