ACROSS THE LEBANON MOUNTAINS BY RAIL
It seems almost sacrilegious to travel by rail over the highways of the
Bible. The iron tracks are laid in the pathways of the prophets, and the
ghosts of the saints may be roused by the shriek of the locomotives. The
modern traveller can cover in a few hours by rail distances that were
several days’ journey in the times of our Lord.
My first railroad trip in the Holy Land was from the port of Jaffa up the
mountains of Judea to the city of Jerusalem. My second was on the Mecca
road from the lower end of the Sea of Galilee through the great plains
of the Hauran to Damascus over the mountains of Lebanon to Beirut on
the Mediterranean Sea. During the latter trip I went from Rayak, in the
Valley of Lebanon, between the two ranges of mountains, along the road
which has been built northward through the Cœle-Syria to Aleppo.
All of these roads are comparatively new, and some are still building.
The Mecca line now runs as far south as Medina, where Mohammed came after
his flight from Mecca, and where his tomb is. That city has something
like forty thousand people and is one of the most fanatical of the Moslem
centres. It will be the chief stopping place on the way to Mecca.
Mecca lies about two hundred and fifty miles still farther south and the
track is being laid toward that point. When the first surveys were made
there were two Christian civil engineers in the surveying party, but the
people were so intolerant that these men were kept hidden the greater
part of the time and did their work inside the tents. They were not
allowed to spy out the land, to see, or be seen.
The Bedouins are now causing the contractors considerable trouble. The
road will take a large part of the pilgrimage traffic, which, it has
been estimated, is worth to Arabia some ten million dollars a year.
Much of the money goes to the owners of the camels and the leaders of
the caravans, who are Bedouins. During the building of the road many of
these have been employed in the construction and in supplying the other
labourers with food. As the present work has neared its completion, many
of the Bedouins have lost their jobs. They are objecting to the railway
and have torn up the tracks in many places. The result is a great unrest
which threatens to cause serious disturbance.
The traffic on the Constantinople-Damascus and Mecca railways will be
made up largely of men on their way to worship at Mecca and Medina. Now,
with nothing but camels to carry them, it is estimated that about four
hundred thousand go there every year, and it is believed that the railway
will increase the traffic from fifty to one hundred per cent. Christians
and other unbelievers will not be carried to the holy cities, although
they may make tours to Petra and other parts of Arabia.
This Mecca railway will have special accommodations for Mohammedans.
Certain of the carriages will be fitted up as mosques, so that the
travellers can perform their devotions during the journey. The praying
carriages will be luxuriously furnished. The floors will be covered with
Persian carpets, and around the sides will be painted verses from the
Koran in letters of gold. A chart will indicate the direction of Mecca,
so that the Faithful can always face the right way when praying, and
there will also be a minaret on the top of the car six and a half feet
high.
The Mecca road is a narrow-gauge with French rolling stock. The material
has been imported from Europe, the ties being of iron to withstand the
white ants, which eat anything wooden. One of the great difficulties of
construction has been the lack of water. The road goes for long stretches
through the desert, and many of the trains carry large tanks to keep the
boilers full.
I travelled over a part of the Mecca road on my way from the Holy Land
north to Damascus. Leaving Tiberias in the early morning, I was rowed
by four lusty Syrians across the Sea of Galilee to Semakh, which is the
station on the lower end of that sea and the place where a branch line
runs off to Haifa. From there northward we skirted the east side of the
Sea of Galilee, passing the hills upon which our Saviour preached. We
rode up the valley of the Yarmuk, a stream almost as large as the Jordan,
which loses itself in the Jordan farther south. We climbed the foothills
of Lebanon, and at about three thousand feet above the surface of the Sea
of Galilee reached the rich plain of Hauran, the great bread basket of
the Bedouins. It grows wheat and other grain, and the land near the track
was covered with poppies, golden daisies, and wild red hollyhocks.
[Illustration: The students of the American University at Beirut number
nearly a thousand, and, whether Christian, Jew, or Moslem, must study the
Bible]
[Illustration: The stones for the Tuberculosis Hospital at Juneh had to
be carried up one at a time on the backs of camels]
[Illustration: From Beirut and its vicinity come nearly all of the Syrian
immigrants to the United States. Most of them are Christians and many of
them have felt the influence of the American University, the centre of
advanced thought in the Near East]
We could see Bedouin camps everywhere. These nomads live in brown tents
so low that the people have to stoop to get in. Outside each little group
of tents was an inclosure for the stock, and on the lands near by cattle
and camels were grazing. As we travelled we could see great flocks of
black goats feeding on the sides of the Lebanon Mountains. They hung to
the cliffs, looking much like flies on the wall. There were also droves
of black cattle and many flocks of fat-tailed white sheep.
The cars were crowded with Turks, Syrians, and Bedouins, but on the
advice of a friend I gave the conductor a dollar, and in return had a
compartment all to myself. _Baksheesh_ will do anything in Syria. As
Shammas, my guide, puts it: “The franc is the wheel upon which the world
goes round.”
This road to Damascus, beginning with the branch line to Haifa, skirts
the edge of Mount Carmel, where Elijah lived in a cave and where he
contended with the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and caused
their destruction. It goes up the plain of Esdraelon, where the fair
Jezebel lived and over which Jehu galloped to Jezreel on his race for the
throne. It takes you in plain sight of Mount Tabor and under the hills
of Nazareth where the Saviour’s boyhood and young manhood were spent. It
crosses the spot where Jael was camping when Sisera came and she lulled
him to sleep to drive the tent peg into his forehead. Then it goes on up
to Damascus over a route which was probably travelled by Abraham, David,
and Solomon, and by St. Paul when he was blinded by the great light.
The road to Jerusalem goes over the plains where the Israelites fought
with the Philistines, through the country of Samson, which I have already
described, and near the place where David with his little stone slew the
great Goliath.
The railway from Damascus to Beirut shows you Mount Hermon, so famed
in the Psalms, and passes numerous places, which, according to the
Mohammedans, were the homes and tombs of the prophets. Take, for
instance, Suk Wady Baroda, a little valley oasis on the way to Baalbek
made up of flat-roofed mud houses surrounded by orchards and vineyards.
It is mentioned by Josephus and is referred to in St. Luke as the home
of the tetrarch Lysanias. The Mohammedans say that Adam lived in the
mountain which looks down upon it, and that it was near the oasis itself
that Cain became jealous of Abel and slew him. I have always thought that
Abel was killed with a club, although I see now that the Bible does not
mention the weapon used in the murder. The Moslem legend says it was a
stone. The story is that Adam had divided the world into two sections
and had given one of them to each of his boys. They had marked out their
respective sections with stones, when a dispute arose concerning the
boundary line. Cain claimed that Abel was inching on him, whereupon hot
words passed, and Cain threw a rock and struck Abel in the temple and
killed him.
According to the Moslem tradition, Cain was filled with remorse. He did
not know what to do with his dead brother, so he took the body on his
back and carried it with him over the world for five hundred years. At
the end of that time he returned to this mountain, where he saw two birds
fighting. At last one killed the other and then washed and buried the one
slain. Cain did likewise with Abel, and straightway there sprang up seven
oak trees, which are pointed out to this day.
According to the same authorities, Seth, Adam’s son, who took the place
of Abel, lived on the western slope of the Lebanon range, and his tomb is
still there. A mosque is built over it and the tomb may be seen through
an iron grating. It is eighty feet long, but the people living in the
village say that it was too short and that Seth’s legs had to be doubled
up in order to fit. Not far away is the tomb of Noah, which is forty feet
longer. It also has a mosque connected with it.
The distance from Damascus to Beirut is ninety-one miles. Travellers are
advised not to take the third class, and women should always go first
class. The third class has compartments eight feet wide running across
the cars at right angles with the engine. Each compartment has two
cushioned benches facing each other, its sides are walled with windows,
and there is a door at each end. The conductor does not go through the
cars, but collects the tickets from the outside, walking along a running
board which extends the full length of the car and holding on to an iron
rail fastened to the outside some distance above the step.
The road is picturesque and gives magnificent views of the Lebanon
Mountains. The track winds its way up and down the hills, and the western
side of the range is so steep that the cars are taken up on cogs after
the same manner as on Pike’s Peak, Mount Washington, and the Rigi. There
are twenty-five stations, mostly two-story buildings of stone.
The passengers are the conglomerate mixture of humanity found in
this part of the Orient. There are scores of Syrians in long coats
and trousers, some wearing red fezzes, and others having turbans or
handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads. There are Turkish officers
in uniform, with swords at their sides, fez-capped boys in silk gowns,
and other Moslems in turbans and gowns. There are Mohammedan women clad
all in black and wearing black veils. There are pretty Greek girls
with bare faces, brown-skinned women from the mountains, and Bedouins,
who have ropes tied about the kerchiefs which half shroud their fierce
features. There are also Persians, Druses, and Christians of all sorts
and conditions.
The trains go slowly in climbing the mountain. The average express makes
less than sixteen miles an hour, while the mixed train takes twelve hours
to make the ninety-one miles.
For many years the European powers have been scheming for the right to
build railroads in this part of the world. One of the biggest and most
talked-of projects is a line to open up the rich valley of the Euphrates
where Babylon and Nineveh once flourished. It has some of the best lands
on the face of the globe, and it has been suggested that it was the site
of the Garden of Eden. The British are especially interested in the
project because of their irrigation plans for Mesopotamia headed by Sir
William Willcocks, the engineer for the Aswan Dam, which has redeemed
about seven million acres in Egypt. The Germans won out in the scramble
for the concession to build the road to Bagdad. The line was divided into
sections and the Germans pushed on the work rapidly. Another concession
to part of this line was granted by the Sultan to a group of Americans,
but their plans fell through.
As to the resources to be developed by these new roads, they are beyond
description enormous. They include rich deposits of coal, oil, and other
minerals. Asia Minor is rich agriculturally. The plains of Mesopotamia
will raise anything that can be grown in Egypt, and the new irrigation
schemes will make them as productive as they were when Nebuchadnezzar was
reigning at Babylon. In ancient times that country had a population of
more than six million. It has not one fourth as many to-day. I am told
that cotton will grow not only there but also throughout Asia Minor, and
it may be that one of the chief competitors of our Southern plantations
will eventually be found in this now almost waste but potentially rich
part of the world.
The famous Berlin-to-Bagdad scheme is not the only evidence of the German
Kaiser’s desire to gobble up as much of the Near East as possible. I
use the word “gobble” advisedly. According to the Century Dictionary,
it means “to swallow in large pieces, to swallow hastily, to seize upon
with greed, and to appropriate graspingly.” And that aptly describes the
German methods. I have seen German _Kultur_ at work all during this trip.
In the richest parts of Palestine I saw their flourishing colonies. At
Jerusalem I saw the great German church built under the very shadow of
the Holy Sepulchre, their huge church on Mount Zion beyond the Tower of
David, and the enormous limestone hospice erected in honour of Kaiserin
Augusta on a commanding slope of the Mount of Olives. It is said that
the money with which the site was bought and some of that used in the
building was a silver wedding present to the Empress. It was known that
she greatly loved Palestine, and her friends planned this memorial as a
silver wedding gift. The hospice is several hundred feet above Jerusalem,
and standing upon its roof on a bright day one can look across the hills
of Judea and see the silvery thread of the Jordan and the shining Dead
Sea with the blue mountains of Moab beyond.
The Kaiser was no respecter of persons, either living or dead. The site
of his big church was purchased by him of Sultan Abdul Hamid when he
visited him in Constantinople. He went there on his way to the Holy Land,
and while hobnobbing with the Sultan got him to sell him this tract for
twenty-four thousand dollars. The land, however, was not large enough, so
the Germans by a clever trick purchased for sixteen thousand dollars the
American cemetery which adjoined the original tract.
The Emperor of Germany when he made his trip through the Holy Land
created as great a sensation as Theodore Roosevelt when he cavorted
through Europe. Kaiser Wilhelm and his empress started in at Beirut and
crossed the mountains of Lebanon to Baalbek and Damascus. They then
returned to Beirut and took ship down the coast, past Tyre and Sidon,
to the Bay of Acre. Here horses were waiting for them and they rode
down around the slopes of Mount Carmel, over the plains of Sharon to
Jaffa, and thence up the hills of Judea to Jerusalem. There were about a
thousand in the party, and it required one thousand two hundred and fifty
mules and horses to carry them and their baggage. The Emperor himself
had a staff of one hundred and twenty, who ate at his own tables, and
there were in addition one hundred and forty naval and military officers.
The Empress also had her ladies-in-waiting with her. One hundred and
seventy-five high Turks and officials were supplied by the Sultan as
a special escort. The Emperor’s tour was so arranged that he had four
camps. He slept in a different camp every night and had a new one for
each meal.
Although the journey was made in October, the weather was hot, and the
chief trouble was to supply the expedition with water. Some died of
thirst, and between Haifa and Jaffa six horses dropped dead of sunstroke.
It was so hot that the trip to the Dead Sea and the Jordan was not
attempted, but the Emperor went to Bethlehem and other places near by. He
remained seven days at Jerusalem, during which time he consummated his
purchases of land.
In Palestine I encountered a German tourist agency, a competitor
of Thomas Cook & Son. This tourist agency had its own hotels at
Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Haifa, and its own guides, dragomans, horses,
and carriages. Its men, who thoroughly understood the country, had
established such relations with the Bedouin tribes that they could take
parties anywhere. The agency’s road mending and other activities had
opened up many hitherto inaccessible parts of the country. Indeed, the
Germans started a new roads movement in the Holy Land. The first attempt
was made when the Kaiser went from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The Sultan had the
highway repaired, and when the Germans travelled over it, it was watered
for the first time in its history, being sprinkled from skin-bags carried
from the shoulders of women and girls, and filled at the springs, wells,
and cisterns near by.