One, formerly much used, is
that over which we had travelled from the coast, and which, on leaving
Beila, leads due north to Quetta _via_ Wadd and Sohrab.
An ordinary
caravan by this route occupies at least forty days in transit.
Traffic is now, therefore, usually carried on by means of the safer
trade-routes through British Sindh, whereby the saving of time is
considerable, and chances of robbery much lessened. The second road
(which has branches leading to the coast towns of Gwadar, Pasui, and
Ormara) proceeds due west to Kej, capital of the Mekran province,
near the Persian border. The latter track we were to follow as far as
Noundra, ninety miles distant. I should add that the so-called roads
of Baluchistan are nothing more than narrow, beaten paths, as often as
not entirely obliterated by swamp or brushwood. Beyond Noundra, where
we left the main track to strike northwards for Gwarjak, there was
absolutely nothing to guide us but occasional landmarks by day and the
stars at night.
Barring the intense monotony, the journey was not altogether
unenjoyable. To reach Noundra it took us five days. This may appear
slow work, but quicker progress is next to impossible in a country
where, even on the regular caravan-road, the guides are constantly
losing the track, and two or three hours are often wasted in regaining
it. The first two or three days of the journey lay through swampy
ground, through which the camels made their way with difficulty, for a
cat on the ice in walnut-shells is less awkward than a camel in mud.
Broad deep swamps alternating with tracts of sandy desert, with
nothing to relieve the monotonous landscape but occasional clumps of
"feesh," a stunted palm about three feet in height, and rough cairns
of rock erected by travellers to mark the pathway where it had become
obliterated, sufficiently describes the scenery passed through for the
first three days after leaving Beila. Large stones accurately laid out
in circles of eighteen or twenty feet in diameter were also met with
at intervals of every two miles or so by the side of the track, and
this very often in districts where nothing was visible but a boundless
waste of loose, drifting sand. Our Baluchis could not or would not
explain the _raison d'etre_ of them, though the stones must, in many
instances, have been brought great distances and for a definite
purpose. I could not, however, get any explanation regarding them at
either Kelat or Quetta.
With the exception of the Lakh Pass leading over a chain of hills
about eighteen miles due west of Beila, the road to Noundra was as
flat as a billiard-table. The crossing of the Lakh, however, was not
accomplished without much difficulty and some danger; for the narrow
pathway, leading over rocky, almost perpendicular, cliffs, three to
four hundred feet high, had, in places, almost entirely crumbled away.
The summits of these cliffs present a curious appearance - fifty to
sixty needle-like spires, hardly a couple of feet thick at the top,
which look as if the hand of man and not of nature had placed them in
the symmetrical order in which they stand, white and clear-cut against
the deep-blue sky, slender and fragile as sugar ornaments, and looking
as though a puff of wind would send them toppling over.
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