Memoir of the Career of Thomas Edward Rogers [‎47r] (93/118)

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summer heat. The gardens escaped the worst of that heat by water admitted for
perhaps half an hour each day by the simple diversion of water with a spade or
two of earth from a narrow irrigation channel after the time-honoured fashion
of the dry lands of Asia and the Middle East.
My job as Assistant Political Agent A mid-ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Agency. , Quetta was not greatly different from
ICS work elsewhere in India except for the predominantly tribal element in the
population and the fact that the directly adminstered areas of the province
amounted to about one-third, the remaining two-thirds being the lands of the Khan
of Kalat. There is little point in describing my work in detail since it almost
immediately began to be overshadowed by the ferment of political developments as
eyes began to be turned towards the prospect of India's independence. But my
duties of supervision of the municipalities of Pishin and Chaman and the making
of other contacts took me out to a bare countryside which could hardly have been
a greater contrast to the steamy, densely populated flood plains of the Ganges and
Jumna river systems in Bengal. I was in a wide expanse of high mountains and
stony plains with only here and there an oasis or scantily watered valley. The
landscape resembled the rocky uplands of Iran I knew and those of Afghanistan I
would shortly visit from Chaman. Even some of the tribes, the Baluchi Marris and
Bugtis had sections which were still nomads moving seasonally in search of pasture
like the Qashqai tribes near Bushire. As the Qashqais with their Turki dialects
differed from the settled Persians so did the Marris and Bugtis, with their
different racial origin and speech, from the settled Pathan tribes to their north.
Whereas across the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. there was Arabia's Empty Quarter I could hardly
journey in the more arid wastes of Baluchistan, a province larger than Italy but
with not much more than a million people, without thinking that India had its
Empty Quarter too. I still have a photograph dating from my 1937 car trip showing
a signpost 19 miles west of Quetta, when the desert has already begun some miles
back. The westward facing wing of the singpost declares 'LONDON 5877 miles'.