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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

groves of date-palms were to be seen along the left bank of the river up to where
it bends to the south. With the conspicuous peak of Aband (5,200 feet) rising
in the north, the landscape was the most pleasing we had so far met in Persian
Makrān.

From Gwarmābād, where we camped near some date-palms fed by a small
spring, a march of some 25 miles, mainly westwards, brought us to the Geh
river and the comparatively large oasis of the same name which it irrigates.
Some groves of wild-growing *kabūr* trees prized for their hard wood, and a few
springs in rocky hollows were passed before reaching the wide stony plateau
from which the Kabjur Kaur, a torrent bed joining the Kājū river, gathers its
drainage. Rugged rock walls confine the channel as the stream passes south
through the fantastically serrated Shalmār hill chain. Where the watershed
towards the drainage of the Geh river is crossed the track passes under a very
steep rocky pinnacle known as Drangī. Legend tells of a hunter who was raised
to its inaccessible needle-like peak by a wicked fairy, and unable to descend threw
himself down the precipice and was killed. The track leading down from the
watershed took us first past the fine spring of Tahar, which waters a large date-
palm grove, and then across the wide torrent bed of the Zahāk-kaur to Pīr
Pīshak, the easternmost of the small villages which together form the oasis of
Geh. After crossing the cultivated plateau above the junction of this bed with
that of the Gungh Kaur to the west, we pitched camp near the village of Tumpī
to the north of the Geh chief's fort.

Geh, with its ample cultivated ground watered by a series of *qanāts*, appears
at one time to have been the chief place in Persian Makrān. It lies at the point
where several convenient routes leading from the Bampūr basin to the coast are
crossed by a lateral line of communication connecting Bāshakard in the west
through Qasrqand, Pishīn, and Mānd with Kēj, the chief valley in British
Makrān. This position is likely to have made Geh a place of some importance
at all times, and even now its chief, Sirdār Ḥusain Khān, is recognized as the
head of the Balūch population in Persian Makrān. But tribal disturbances
following the death of his father, who up to 1916 had remained a practically
independent ruler, have greatly reduced the prosperity of Geh, and the whole
oasis, apart from outlying hamlets, can now count scarcely more than 500
homesteads, and those merely mat-huts.

The fort of the Geh Sirdārs rising on a natural ridge of clay and conglomerate
towards the southern edge of the plateau looked imposing with its high walls
(Fig. 80). But neither in its dilapidated interior nor on the ground outside
was any evidence of antiquity to be seen. Nor did I find any at the smaller ruined
fort, known as Kōl-qal'a, built on a lower ridge close to the south, and said to

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