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The general, one of the highest geographical authorities on Persia, strongly dissuaded my attempting to reach India viâ Meshéd and Afghanistán. "You will only be stopped and sent back," said he; "what is the use of losing time?" I resolved, therefore, after mature deliberation, to proceed direct to Ispahán, Shiráz, and Bushire, and from thence by steamer to Sonmiani, on the coast of Baluchistán.
Attended by Chengiz Khan in a gorgeous costume of blue and yellow silk, and followed by a rabble of two or three hundred men and boys, I visited the bazaar next morning. The trade of Sonmiani is, as may be imagined, insignificant.
Mark Tapley himself would scarcely have taken a cheerful view of things on landing at Sonmiani. Imagine a howling wilderness of rock and scrub, stretching away to where, on the far horizon, some low hills cut the brazen sky-line.
"But take care of Malak; he is a bad man a very bad man." A rough and tedious journey of two days over deep sandy desert, varied by an occasional salt marsh, brought us to Beïla, the seat of government of the Djam, or chief of the province of Las Beïla, eighty miles due north of Sonmiani.
On the beach the so-called town of Sonmiani a collection of dilapidated mud huts, over which two or three tattered red and yellow banners flutter in the breeze, and beneath which a small and shallow harbour emits a powerful odour of mud, sewage, and rotten fish.
The imports chiefly consist of rice, pepper, sugar, spices, indigo, wood, and piece goods, chiefly landed at the ports of Gwádar or Sonmiani. But little is as yet known of the mineral products of this district.
The town contains about 4000 inhabitants, and, from a distance, presents a curious appearance, each house being fitted, as at Sonmiani, with a large "badgir," or wind-catcher. Like most Eastern cities, Beïla does not improve on closer acquaintance. The people are dirty and indolent.
"He wants to know if you think them pretty," said my interpreter; but I thought it best to maintain a dignified silence. The chief of Sonmiani was, for a Mohammedan, singularly lax. A kind of rough pottery is made at Sonmiani, and this is the only industry.
Indeed, although we were fairly fortunate as regard wells, and I was never compelled to put the caravan on short allowance, I did not pass a single stream of running water the whole way from Sonmiani to Dhaïra, twenty miles south of Gwarjak, though we must in that distance have crossed at least fifteen dry river-beds, varying from twenty to eighty yards in width.
Most of them have an Italian type of face, olive complexion, and large dark eyes, with sweeping lashes. But very few wore the hideous nose-rings so common at Beïla and Sonmiani. Morality is at a discount in the capital, and prostitution common.
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