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INDIA

of Jacobabad. Not thirty years ago Jacobabad was on
the borders of Sind, where Sind and Baluchistan meet.
[t was our ‘frontier ” station in that direction; and when
the war-worn old frontier soldier, General Jacob, was
buried there (to live for ever in Baluch legends as the
founder of one of their most holy ¢ziarats”), there was
little expectation that ere long, two days’ journey by rail
would separate Jacobabad from the advanced frontier—
the modern frontier—which finds expression beyond the
Khojak mountains in the little new-born oasis of New
Chaman.
The history of the two lines of rail which carry the
traveller from the foot of the Baluch hills to Quetta is
written large enough in the recent annals of Indian
public works. The Harnai route and the Bolan route
have much in common. They are both mountain lines
with steep grades, and both depend on powerful engines,
running on metals laid at an ordinary gauge for their
haulage. Each has had its special difficulties to contend
with. The Harnai route, which, passing through the
valley of that name, taps a direct highroad to the valleys
of the Zhob and Gomal half-way to Quetta, is liable to
be overwhelmed by periodic avalanches of clay or mud
loosened by the effects of heavy rainfall. There is no
engineering out of this difficulty. There are mountains
of this clay formation, and when the avalanche descends
there is nothing to be done but to dig out the line and
start afresh. On the Bolan line the original alignment
carried the railway up the Bolan river bed—a stony,
shingly ramp, which in ordinary dry seasons is easily
traversable, and which requires no great elevation above
the water channel to avoid flood level in ordinary rainy
seasons. But the Bolan is subject to intermittent floods
of most extraordinary violence, which cannot be foretold
or foreseen. One such flood completely destroyed the
line when it was nearly complete. So terrific was its
power that bridges, metals, revetments, and permanent
way were all washed into space over long stretches of the
line, leaving “not a wrack behind.” Since then a new