BALUCHISTAN

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the geographical characteristics of these countries and
note the chief highways to India which intersect them.
Baluchistan is bounded on the south by the Arabian
Sea, and on the west by the frontier Persian provinces of
Kirman and Khorasan. The boundary is definitely fixed
by international commission, and it is not necessary to
follow it in much detail. It leaves the Arabian sea-coast
hear the little fishing-port of Gwatar (not Gwadar, which
is some fifty miles to the east of it), between the Chil
and the Dasht rivers, and runs north-east through the
hilly wilderness of western
Makran to the Mashkhel
River. Leaving the small
and comparatively insignificant
 (but much discussed)
 province of Kohuk
to Persia, it starts again
from the Mashkhel (very
close to its junction with
the Rakshan, one of the
chief rivers of Southern
Baluchistan), and runs
north-west, first touching
the Hamun, or swamp,
which receives the Mashkhel
 - Rakshan drainage,
and then, following a welldefined
 line of strong natural features to the north.
west, it joins the Afghan and Persian boundaries on
the historical peak of Malik Siah Koh. The trijunction
of the three kingdoms might be called the apotheosis
of desolation ; it overlooks a vast extent of sandy waste
and rugged hills from a height of 5000 or 6ooo feet
above sea-level. To the north are the wide flats of
Southern Seistan—plains that once were green with the
irrigated crops which won for Seistan the title of the
“granary of Asia,” but which are now a barren and
deserted wilderness. Not thirty miles to the east is the
salt-white swamp of Gaod-i-Zirreh. about which there is

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