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BALUCHISTAN

aggregate for the year ending 30th June 1901 being $18,899,473. The Baltimore and Ohio railway tunnel was completed in 1895. It is one mile and two-thirds in length, passes under the city from north to south, and is so equipped that trains can be run through it by electricity. Baltimore trust companies have taken a very active part in the financing of southern railway and other enterprises. It is estimated that the city has more than $100,000,000 invested in the south. Connected with this financial business has been the growth of the bonding companies taking the place of individual bonds. Baltimore is probably the chief centre of this business for the United States. The bonding and trust companies of the city have an aggregate capital of $21,650,000 and a surplus of $17,502,000, or a total of capital and surplus of over $39,000,000. The national banks of the city have an aggregate capital of $11,758,260 and a surplus of $4,479,275. Deposits in the savings banks amount to over $50,000,000. The political history of Baltimore in recent years has been peculiarly interesting. Shortly after the Civil ar the Democratic party regained control ol the city and organized a “machine which for twenty-eight years held unshaken control of the government. The struggle to overthrow the machine began in earnest in 1875, when a coalition was made between the reform element in the Democratic party (under the able leadership of Severn Teackle

Wallis) and the Republican party. The attempt was renewed at frequent intervals, the chief obstacle encountered being the fraud and violence in elections, until it culminated in the victory ot 1895. A new election law of the most thoroughgoing kind was then enacted by the legislature, under which the old evils have been completely removed. The Republican mayor elected in 1895, in his desire to govern the city properly, encountered strong opposition from the city council, which passed an ordinance taking away from the mayor the power of appointment and vesting it in themselves, and carried it by a three-fourths vote over the mayor’s veto. Upon a test case, the Maryland Court of Appeals decided that the council had exceeded its powers. The affair led to the passing of a new charter, some of the salient features of which are as follows:— Doubling of the terms of mayor and city councillors ; appointment by the mayor of the heads of executive departments, and of subordinate officials by these heads ; mayor’s appointments subject to confirmation by the second branch of the city comicil oidy; this branch made a small body of eight men, each chosen from the whole of a section, including one-fourth of the city ; the president of the second branch elected by the city as a whole; a board of estimates and a board of public improvements, each made up of heads of the appropriate executive departments (together with the president of the second branch), exercising supervision and control of appropriations, &c., and a school board consisting of nine persons appointed from the city at large by the mayor. The new school board replaced a board of twenty-two members, one from each ward, who were nominally elected by the first branch of the city council, but were practically chosen for political reasons, each by the councillor from his ward, and were, as a rule, obviously unfit for school management. The characteristic features of the events here sketched have been the effectiveness of the reform movement and the recognition of the power of the independent element. (f. Fr.)

BALUCHISTAN. BALUCHISTAN, a country which, like Afghanistan, derives its name from the dominant race of its inhabitants, extends from the Gomul (or Guinal) river to the Arabian Sea, and from the borders of Persia and Afghanistan to those of the Punjab and Sind. Three hundred miles of its mountain walls facing the Indus are south of the railway from the Indus to Quetta, and about 250 north of it. The railway with the passes and plains about it, and the dominant hills which surround Quetta, divide Baluchistan into two distinct parts. North of the railway line, hedged in between Afghanistan and the plains of the Indus, stretch the long ridges of rough but picturesque highlands, which embrace the central ranges of the Sulimani system (the prehistoric home of the Pathan highlander), where vegetation is often Alpine, and the climate clear and bracing and subject to no great extremes of temperature. The average breadth of this northern Pathan district is 150 miles, but it narrows to less than 100 miles on the line of the Gomul, and expands to more than 200 miles on the line of the railway. Here all the main drainage runs either northwards to the Gomul, passing through the uplands that lie west of the Sulimani range ; or it gathers locally in narrow lateral valleys at the back of these mountains, and then bursts directly eastwards through the limestone axis of the hills, making for the Indus by the shortest transverse route. ' South of the railway lies a square block of territory, measuring roughly 300 miles by 300, primarily the home of the Brahui and the Baluch; but within that block are included almost every conceivable phase of climate and representatives of half the great races of Asia. Here, throughout the elevated highlands of the Kalat plateau which are called Jalawan, the drainage gathers into channels which cut deep gorges in the hills, and passes eastwards into the plains of Sind. Beyond and south of the hydrographical area of the Jalawan highlands the rivers and streams of the hills either run in long straight lines to the Arabian Sea, north of Karachi, or, curving gradually westwards, they disappear in the inland swamps which form so prominent a feature in this pait of South-West Asia. A narrow width of the coast districts

collects its waters for discharge into the Arabian Sea direct. This section includes Makran. Baluchistan thus becomes naturally divided into two districts, north and south, by an intervening space which contains the Sind-Pishin railway. This intervening space comprises the wedgeshaped desert of Gandava (Kach Gandava), which is thrust westwards from the Indus as a deep indentation into the mountains, and, above it, the central uplands which figure on the map as <l British Baluchistan wheie lies Quetta. All Baluchistan has now been surveyed. From the great Indus series of triangles bases have been selected at intervals which have supported minor chains of triangulation reaching into the heart of the country. These again have been connected by links of more or less regularity, so that, if the Baluchistan triangulation lacks the rigid accuracy of a “first-class” system, it at least supports good topography on geographical scales. From Domandi, at the junction of the Gomul and Kundar rivers, the boundary between Baluchistan and Afghanistan follows the Kundar stream for about 40 miles to the south-west. Northern. It then leaves the river and diverges northwards, so as to include a section of the plain country stretching away towards Lake Abistada, before returning to the skirts of the hills. _ After about 100 miles of this divergence it strikes the Kadanai river, turning the northern spurs of the Toba plateau (the base of the Kojak range), and winds through the open plains west of the Kojak. Here, however, the boundary does not follow the river. It deserts it for the western edge of the Toba plateau (8000 feet high at this point), till it nears the little railway station of New Chaman. It then descends to the plains, returns again to the hills 40 miles south of Chaman, and thenceforward is defined by hill ranges southwards to Nushki. The eastern boundary of this northern section of Baluchistan is the “red line at the foot of the frontier hills, which defines the border of British India. This part of Baluchistan thus presents a buffer system of independent tribes between the British frontier and Afghanistan. But the independence of the Pathan people south of the Gomul is not as the independence of the Pathans (Waziris, Afridis, &c.) who live north ot it It is true that the Indian Government interferes as little with the internal jurisdiction of the tribal chiefs amongst the Pathans of the Sulimani range as it does with that of the northern chiefs ; but t e occupation of a line of posts on the Zhob river, which flanks that range almost from end to end on the west, places the doors ol communication with Afghanistan in British hands, and gives command of their hills. It thus tends to the maintenance of peace