'MAP OF PERSIA, WITH A MEMORANDUM AND INDEX.' [‎4v] (13/57)

6
MEMORANDUM ON THE NEW MAP OF PERSIA.
by single lines, following their course. Where, however, they only
exist upon hearsay—and that as a rule the not too veracious gossip of
muleteers—I have departed from the example set in previous maps, and
have as a rule excluded them; such hypothetical routes being more fre
quently a snare than an assistance to the traveller.
In the selection of names of places for insertion, I have
necessarily been compelled to exercise a somewhat arbitrary choice. I
might easily, from the large-scale maps which have been placed at my
disposal, have crammed the superficies of this map with threefold or four
fold the number of names. In the East, however, small villages and
nomad camps are constantly shifting or disappearing; in desert regions,
a name in many cases indicates little more than a caravanserai A roadside inn providing accommodation for caravans (groups of travellers). or a well;
and I have accordingly given the preference to the recorded experiences
of the most recent travellers; my principal desire being not unduly
to crowd the surface, or to represent as a teeming centre of population
what the exasperated traveller would find upon approach, to be only
a waste expanse, with widely scattered and fugitive evidences of life.
I have inserted the altitudes of the principal cities and mountains;
and have marked the course of the Indo-European Telegraphic wires
from diflis via Tabriz and Teheran to Bushire (as also the branch line,
maintained by a British staff, from Teheran to Meshed), of the submarine
cables in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , and of the land-line from Jask along the
coast of Mekran to Kurrachi. The Persian telegraphic wires I have
thought it superfluous to introduce.
The only two railways in Persia, from Mahmudabad on the Caspian
to Amol, 12 miles, and from Teheran to Shah Abdul Azim, 6 miles, are
marked.
Of political frontiers or lines of demarcation I must speak at rather
greater length. I have not inserted any provincial boundaries in Persia
itself, for the reason that the administrative subdivisions are not fixed,
as in England, by topographical conditions, but are determined by poli
tical exigencies, and vary very much from time to time. As regards
external frontiers, I have, after much consideration, adopted a fourfold
system of delineation, answering to the four classes of border which I
shall show to exist either in Persia or in the adjacent countries that also
appear on this map. They are as follows:—