SIRDAR SAYED KHAN.

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Khan's khel (village), about ten miles from Asak Chah, where I found my tents pitched, and shortly afterwards the chief paid me a visit in my tent. Knowing something of the customs of the country, I had tea and tobacco ready for him, and as he could only talk Persian and Baloochi, sat down to the interview with Ralmat Khan as interpreter. At the end of half an hour I brought the interview to a close by thanking him for the arrangements he had made for my journey from Robat, and presented him with a small present for the trouble he had taken to make my journey through his part of the country easy and comfortable.

In appearance he is a fine-looking man, intelligent, and able to talk upon various subjects, and having devoted his services to the British, has proved most useful in looking after the track from Robat to Nasratabad. The wells and shelters I had come across on this section of the trade-route had been built by him, and among other things, he supplies men to carry the mail-bag from Sistan to Birjand, there being at present no regular postal service between the two places. He spoke in terms of the highest praise of the work done by Trench in the furtherance of trade and the prosperity of the people; but when I asked him about the Russian vice-consul, he affected complete ignorance, saying that he did not even know his name. This though the Russian had then been living at Nasratabad for nearly a year!

The Amir of Sistan had sent out his mules to help me over the last twenty miles that lay between myself and his capital, a kindness which I greatly appreciated when I saw what sort of a road it was that led up the chief town in Sistan, and still more when I learnt

to

that his own private mules were the only ones in the country. The whole face of the country changed these last twenty miles: instead of a dry waterless plain, it became a plain intersected with ditches and canals, covered with low scrub jungle, and with pools of water, making travelling anything but pleasant; for with the exception of one or two lately made by Trench, there were no bridges, and the canals being often deep, wettings were unpleasantly frequent. Villages were dotted about over the plain, differing little from the ruined specimens I had already seen, with the exception of being inhabited.

A few miles out from Nasratabad Trench met me, escorted by two sowars of Jacob's Horse, carrying a small union-jack on a lance. A little farther on the low houses of a mud town became visible on the horizon, and in a short time we were winding in and out through tortuous and narrow lanes, between the small and irregularly built houses of Husseinabad, the southern portion of the capital. From narrow alleys we emerged on to a graveyard unenclosed in any way, and spread out like a carpet in front of the Russian vice-consul's house. Before us rose the walls of Nasratabad, the northern city, and to the east stretched the unbounded plain. Here a few hundred yards from the town, under the shadow of the union-jack, flying from a 30-foot flagstaff, was to be seen a neatly laid-out settlement, the home of the English consul and his staff. My journey for the time being was at an end, and I looked forward with pleasure to a rest in Sistan, ready to appreciate to the full the companionship of a fellowcountryman, and the comforts and luxuries of a fixed abode, after many days of solitary marching over the stony wastes of inhospitable Baloochistan.

CHAPTER III.

NASRATABAD AND ITS NOBILITY.

Climate to be expected on the route-Facilities for travelling-First impressions of the capital-Husseinabad-Nasratabad-An Indian trader -Trenchabad-The Russian Vice-Consul-Mir Ali Akbar, Amir of Sistan-Celebrating the Czar's birthday-An exciting dinner-party--Present from the Amir-Mir Mausum Khan, the sartip-Mohammed Reza Khan, the sarhang-Sirdar Purdil Khan and Mir Abbas-Other sojourners in the land.

I HAVE now described the journey from Quetta to Sistan, a description which is of necessity somewhat tedious, owing to the monotonous sameness of the country through which the route passes, and the utter absence of any object of interest in its physical conformation. Attractions for the ordinary traveller there are none, it being much more likely that his predominant feelings would be those of repulsion from a route where the one object one grows to look and long for is the small white speck on the horizon which slowly resolves itself into a tent, proclaiming the end of the day's march to be at hand.

But what is wanting in physical attraction is made up for by the interest afforded in speculating as to the political, strategical, and commercial future of the route, which, considering its more than probable value, looked at from a commercial point of view alone, has until quite recently been sadly neglected.

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It is to the merchant undoubtedly that the route must appeal most strongly at present, dangling as it does before his eager eyes visions of fortunes waiting to be gathered; but hand in hand with the merchant will be found the politician, and that the results of the bridge thus raised between India and Persia, across the Gulf of Baloochistan, will penetrate beyond its present terminus is scarcely open to doubt.

I have endeavoured to show that the journey from Quetta can-thanks to the admirable way in which Captain Webb Ware, the officer in charge of the route, has carried out his duties-be performed with ease and comparative comfort, that supplies are forthcoming at all the larger posts, and that water and grazing exist for camels at every stage. The climate is in the winter, as a rule, fine and dry, cold at nights and in the early mornings, with a warm sun in the middle of the day, and it is in winter that caravans at present travel over it; but I am assured by those who ought to know, that though the heat in the daytime is very considerable, there is no reason why caravans (who prefer travelling by night when feasible) should not find the route in every respect as satisfactory a one in summer as in winter. The total rainfall is very small, and for some years has not averaged more than a few inches, which makes cultivation impossible except in selected spots in the vicinity of the mountains, where artificial irrigation is possible by means of karezes; and it is for this reason that the country over which the route passes has the appearance of a deserted and uninhabited waste, such villages as there are being situated at the foot of the mountains, and as far removed as possible from the dead stretches of unproductive plain. As far as Dalbandin there should be no difficulty