Wild Sheep in Seistan 1 3 1 



of smugglers is the progress through the country 

 of these bands of white-robed braves with their 

 advance-guards, rear-guards, and flankers singing 

 and firing their rifles as they go. Here, in 

 Persian territory, law-breakers though they be, 

 who can say them nay ? Persian " regulars " 

 as well as Seistani Baluch sowars and jambazes 

 the latter a class that have in them military 

 possibilities are sent out from Seistan to stop 



the traffic, but ! Once a Seistani force took 



up a position on a narrow gorge by which the 

 Afghans were expected to pass out of the hills, 

 and when the head of the gun-runners' caravan 

 entered the defile, it seemed as if fighting were 

 inevitable. The Seistanis, however, were con- 

 tent or rather we will hope disgusted to see 

 the Afghans turn about ; and whilst they were 

 crouching behind their rocks, the smugglers found 

 an exit by another gorge a few miles distant. 

 The remarkable part of the occurrence did not 

 lie in the Seistanis being out-manoeuvred or in 

 their pusillanimity, 1 but in the extraordinary 

 difficulty of the route by which the Afghan 

 caravan all camels actually passed a few miles 



1 " Persia can be conquered with a single company without firing 

 a shot ; with a battalion it would be more dim cult ; with a whole 

 regiment it would be impossible, for the entire force would perish 

 of hunger ! " From Curzon's * Persia.' 



