Page 70 - PERSIAN 5 1905_1911

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ADMINISTRATION REPORT ON THE PERSIAN GULP POLITICAL
and other relations, male and female, to a few men who work their export
to the Arab Coast. One notorious dealer in Biyabnn district and Persian
Baluchistan i8 Mir Barkat Khan ; the children are supposed to be shipped by
twos and threes in native boats from the small Mekran Coast ports. It is
reported that those children are moat carefully coached beforehand to abscond
the moment that they are ill-treatod to one of our Consulates or Agonoies and
there claim their freedom. The following tabular statement gives the
numbers manumitted at this Consulate, or through its good offices. The figures
shown against Lingah are of those who have taken refuge at the British
Agency there and whose cases have now to bo referred to this Consulate for the
grant of manumission papers.

Manumitted J AN OMITTED AFTEB BBTEBENCI TO THE
DlBECT BY
Cobb plate. Kabquzaix.
Plnoe.
Slavoo belong­ Slavca of
Slaver belong­ ing to Persian
ing to other sa bject s, Fenian nation*
•Jit? with
than Pcftixn Africans, Persian Total.
subjects.
etc. master*.
Bunder Abbas 11 47 26 &4
Liugah 1 20 21

I
Totals 12 67 26 105
I
Thus 105 of those who took refuge at tuis Consulate were manumitted, a
few only being refused after their cases had been carefully enquired into, and
their number does not amount to more than 6 or 8.
Telegroph.—The most important event of the year was the connection by
telegraph of Bund* r Abbas with the rest of the world, the work being carried
out by the Indo-European Telegraph Department for the Persian Govern­
ment. On the 14th October 1905 the I. G.T. S. Patric Stewart laid the
first section of the cable across the strait between Henjam Island and Deristan
on the south side of Kisbm Island, and then, after dropping material for the
land line across Kishm Island at Suza, she arrived at Kisbm town on the 16tb
October. On the following day the vessel came over to Bunder Abbas and
laid the cable from Bunder Abbas to Kishm joining up with the sbire-end
at Kishm, laid on the previous day, late in the afternoon. Work on the land-
line across Kishm Island and on the various cable-houses was pushed forward
until the line was complete from the Henjam Station to the cable bouse at
Bunder Abbas, when for the first time through connection over the wire
with Henjam became possible on the evening of the 31st December 19C6.
Subsequently it was found advisable to shift the cable-house further
inland ; on this work being undertaken on the 19th January 1906, and partially
carried out, it was forcibly stopped by the local authorities t wo days later,
without any definite orders and apparently on the initiative and at the instiga­
tion of M. Stas, the Director of Customs. No reference was made to the
British Consulate or to the Telegraph Superintendent in charge of the work;
after considerable telegraphic correspondence with His Majesty’s
d* Affaires at Tehran the matter remained in abeyance until the 12th March
1906 when the Persian authorities without aDy previous intimationa suddenly
commenced works on a new Telegraph Office on a most unsuitable site within
a few yards of the condemned cable-house and directly across the intended
line of the cable. In 6pite of urgent local protests and the assurances or the
Central Government at Tehran to His Majesty’s Chargd d*Affaires *or*
was continued well into April when it eventually stopped aa the ves*" o
British representations. There is only too good reason to believe
insistence and energy with which work was continued by the Director