Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1921.djvu/213

 COMMERCE — COMMUNICATIONS 161

maize, and potatoes ; while grapes, apricots, peaches, apples, and melons are grown in abundance. Paujgiir in Makran is famous for its dates. Among wild animals are the markhor, urial (wild-sheep), Sind ibex, ravine-deer, bear, and panther, and the chief domestic animals are the camel, horses, oxen and cows, and donkeys.

Little is yet known of the mineralogy of the country. Iron and lead are found near Khuzdar ; coal is worked at Khost on the Sindh-Pishin railway, and in the Sor hills near Quetta. Asbestos and chromite have been found in Zhob, and chromite also in the Quetta Pishin district. There are oil springs at Khattan in the Marri couutry, but these are not now worked. Sulphate of iron has been found in Kalat and sulphate of aluminium in Chagai. Salt is manufactured in Pishin, in the Zhob district, and in the Kalat State. Promising deposits of salt were discovered in 1917-18 in the Chagai district, development of which is under consideration. Local manufactures are unimportant. A few matchlocks and other weapons are made, and various kinds of ironwork for agricultural pur- poses. The nomad tribes make felts, rough blankets, and rugs. Brahui women are famous for their needle-work. Leather-work and pottery are manufactured in Kachhi. There is a brewery as well as a government distillery for the manufacture of country spirit at Quetta, and also mills foi grinding flour, pressing chaff, manufacturing patent coal-fuel, and ice. A museum at Quetta was opened in 1906. The Indian Staff College was opened at Quetta in 1907.

Commerce. — The land traffic with India passes either by railway or Ly the routes from Kalat and Las Bela to Sind, and through the Loralai district, to the Punjab. The value of the trans-frontier imports (excluding purely transit trade between places in Baluchistan, and the trade by road between Karachi and Kalat and Las Bela) from Kalat and Las Bela into India in 1918-19 was Rs. 14,46,561, and of the exports from India to Kalat and Las Bela, Rs. 5,51,355. (This trans-frontier trade is regarded since April 1, 1919, as internal traffic, and statistics are discontinued.) The chief exports from the Province are fruit, drugs, fish, mats, and wool ; imports consist of piece-goods, chiefly of Indian manufacture, metal ware, tea, sugar, and canned goods.

Over-sea trade is carried on through ports on the Makran coast with India, the exports consisting of dates, matting and dried fish, and the im- ports chiefly of piece-goods and food grains. The greater part of this trade is with the Bombay Presidency.

The principal imports into Baluchistan from foreign countries, viz., Afghanistan and Persia, are fruit, ghee, wool, sheep, horses and ponies. I Piece-goods in large quantities, indigo, tea, sugar, and metals are sent to these i countries through Baluchistan.

Communications. — Good roads connect the more important centres in rectly administered places. There are 976 miles of metalled and i partly metalled roads and 2,130 of unmetalled roacU and paths.

The North- Western railway, which has the standard gauge of 51 1. 6in., enters Baluchistan near Jhatpat and crosses the Kachhi plain to Sibi, where it bifurcates, one branch going by Harnai and the other by Quetta, and re- unites at Bostan, whence the line runs to Chaman. A line of railway t Nushki S2J miles long, which cost about 7,000,000 rupees, was opened for traffic in 1905, and an extension of the railway line from Nushki up