Excerpt from Our Recent Progress in Southern Persia, and Its Possibilities

I will pass on now to what I consider one of the most hopeful signs of official awakening to the great importance of the Persian Question. I allude to the large increase which the past two years have shown in the number of our consulates. At the commencement of 1903, including the Resident at Bushire, we had in all Persia only nine or ten consular officials. To-day we have fifteen. In that year there were added to the list a permanent Consul at Shiraz, and a new vice-consul at turbat-i-haideri.

The appointment of a permanent Consul at Shiraz gives the Resident at Bushire liberty to devote the whole of his attention to matters concerning the Gulf. Until two years ago it was his custom to retire from the coast and spend the hot months in Shiraz, thus dividing his attention between the two stations. The necessity for this annual migration has now been removed.

The appointment of a vice-consulate at Turbat-i Haideri, within eighty miles of Meshed, where British representation already appears to be out of proportion to the amount of British trade, might strike the casual observer as superfluous. The Government of India was, however, obliged to place a Consul there to protect our Indian traders from the pressing attention paid them by the Russian quarantine officers, on the plea of preventing the introduction of plague from India.

The following year, 1904, saw a still further addition to our consular staff, and the number of our officers was raised from twelve to fifteen.

A Consul was appointed at Ahwaz, a town of no small importance, situated on the Karun, Persia's only navigable river. From here an excellent road has been constructed by Messrs. Lynch to Ispahan, a distance of 270 miles, as against 485 miles from Bushire; so that in View of the costliness of land-borne as opposed to sea-borne traflic, Ahwaz, rather than Bushire, appears to be the natural port of Ispahan. The climate is fair, and the district is free from the curse of fanatical population, which is not the case at the neighbouring town of Shuster. Kermanshah, too, has been added to the list. This large and flourishing town on the baghdad-teheran route is the first of any importance reached (from Baghdad) after entering Persian territory, and the annual trade passing through it is valued at over a million sterling.

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