ic--Rates on
the Ahwaz-Isfahan track--The Government's
attitude--Wheat--Russian influence--Backhtiari Chiefs--Up and
down river trade--Gum--Cotton goods--Sugar--Caravan
route--Steamers--Disadvantages of a policy of drift--Russian
enterprise.

So much for Bandar Abbas and Lingah. I will not touch on Bushire, too
well known to English people, but Mahommerah may have a special interest
to us, and also to Russia. It is rather curious to note that it has never
struck the British politician nor the newspaper writer that Russia's
aims, based usually on sound and practical knowledge, might be focussed
on this port, which occupies the most favourable position in the Persian
Gulf for Russia's purposes. Even strategically it is certainly as good as
Bandar Abbas, while commercially its advantages over the latter port are
a thousandfold greater.

These advantages are a navigable river, through fertile country, instead
of an almost impassable, waterless desert, and a distance as the crow
flies from Russian territory to Mahommerah one-third shorter than from
Bandar Abbas. A railway through the most populated and richest part of
Persia could easily be constructed to Ahwaz. The climate is healthy
though warm.

Another most curious fact which seems almost incredible is that the
British Government, through ignorance or otherwise, by a policy of drift
may probably be the cause of helping Russia to reap the benefit of
British enterprise on the Karun River, in the development of which a
considerable amount of British capital has already been sunk. The
importance, political and commercial, of continuing the navigation of the
Karun River until it does become a financial success--which it is bound
to be as soon as the country all round it is fully developed--is too
obvious for me to write at length upon it, but it cannot be expected that
a private company should bear the burden and loss entirely for the good
of the mother country without any assistance from the home Government.

The British firm, who run the steamers, with much insight and
praiseworthy enterprise improved the existing caravan track from Isfahan
to Ahwaz on the Karun River, the point up to which the river is navigable
by steamers not drawing more than four feet. They built two fine
suspension bridges, one over the Karun at Godar-i-Balutak and the other,
the Pul-Amarat (or Built-bridge) constructed on the side of an ancient
masonry bridge. The trac