National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

would render it difficult, if not altogether impossible, to continue field work far
into the spring. There was an additional, practical reason prompting an early
start northward. News received from Chāhbār showed that a large military
escort was coming from Rāmishk, the temporary head-quarters of the General
Commanding, Balūchistān, to join me; and time might be saved by moving
ahead to meet it. For the journey to Bampūr I proposed to follow the route
passing the valleys of Qasrqand and Geh containing the principal settlements to
be found in the hills which border the basin on the south.

The first march lay across a bare plain of clay, where only a few wretched
huts of herdsmen were to be seen and some patches of abandoned cultivation. It
brought us to Bandagāh, where a rain pool of muddy water allowed us to halt
at the foot of the outermost hill range. Next day the utterly barren range was
crossed, first into a belt of low and much-decayed sandstone hills and beyond
this into an area where precarious cultivation is maintained in years of some
rainfall by scattered small hamlets of mat-huts. The remains reported near
Turkāni, where we halted, proved to consist of a few insignificant stone-heaps
marking decayed rubble-built dwellings. There were also some low cairns or
dambs, hard to distinguish from the heaps of decomposed rock which cover a
small hill visited as a ziārat, about 3 miles to the north of the hamlet.

Since the camel transport brought from Tīz had absconded during the follow-
ing night, it was a special relief when next day there arrived the large escort of
eighty Persian Nizāmīs or regulars, all mounted on camels (Fig. 50). Their
commander was 'Sultān' Āghā Ḥusain Anṣārī, a pleasant and energetic officer
from Tabrīz, whose readiness to facilitate our work and cheerfully to face any
hardships incidental to rough travel I soon learned fully to appreciate. With him
there came Sirdār Ḥusain Khān of Geh (Fig. 52), whom the Persian Government,
since the overthrow of the régime of Dōst Muḥammad Khān, the late semi-
independent chief of Bampūr, had installed as the head of the Balūch tribes of
Makrān. The Sirdār remained with us all the way to Jīruft, well beyond the
area nominally in his charge, and in spite of his youth and other impediments
made himself very useful in various practical ways. I soon had occasion to realize
how great our difficulties about 'supply and transport', to say nothing about local
guidance and labour, would have been in this but recently pacified region without
the effective protection and help kindly provided by General Muḥammad Khān
Nakshiwān under the orders of the Persian Government. I may record here at
once also how glad I was to note the attention paid to the discipline and well-
being of the men, all from Sīstān, constituting the escort, as well as the care
which had been taken to provide them with a sufficiency of transport and food.

A day's rest had to be given to the escort, which since leaving Rāmishk had