Haifa, June 13.—When Thackeray foretold that the day would come when the
scream of the locomotive would awake the echoes in the Holy Land, and
the voice of the conductor be heard shouting, “Ease her, stop her! Any
passengers for Joppa?” he probably did so very much in the spirit in
which Macaulay prophesied the New-Zealander sitting on the ruins of
London Bridge, as an event in the dim future, and as a part of some
distant impending social revolution; but the realization of the
prediction is becoming imminent. The preliminary survey has just been
completed as far as the Jordan, of the Hamidié, or Acre and Damascus
Railway, which bids fair to be the first Palestine railway.
It is called the Hamidié line because it is named after his present
majesty the Sultan Abdul Hamid, and probably one reason why the firman
has been granted so easily lies in the fact that it passes through a
great extent of property which he has recently acquired to the east of
the plain of Esdraelon. The concession is held by ten or twelve
gentlemen, some of whom are Moslems and some Christians, but all are
Ottoman subjects resident in Syria. Among the most influential are the
Messrs. Sursock, bankers, who own the greater part of the plain of
Esdraelon, and who have therefore a large interest in the success of the
line. From which it will appear that this is no speculation of Western
promoters or financiers, but a real, bona-fide enterprise, and one which
is likely to become a large source of profit to the holders of the
concession and to the shareholders, for it will tap one of the richest
grain-producing districts in the East.
I have myself ridden over the line for the first twenty miles, and have
just seen the surveying party, who have returned well satisfied with the
facilities which it offers from an engineering point of view. Starting
from Acre, it will follow the curve of the bay for ten miles in a
southerly direction at a distance of about two miles from the beach.
Crossing the Kishon by a sixty-foot bridge, it will turn east at the
junction of a short branch line, two miles long, at Haifa. Hugging the
foot of the Carmel range, so as to avoid the Kishon marshes, it will
pass through the gorge which separates that mountain from the lower
ranges of the Galilee hills, and debouch into the plain of Esdraelon.
This plain it will traverse in its entire length. The station for
Nazareth will be distant about twelve miles from that town; there may,
however, be a short branch to the foot of the hills.
So far there has only been a rise from the sea-level in twenty miles of
two hundred and ten feet, so that the grade is imperceptible. It now
crosses the watershed, and commences to descend across the plain of
Jezreel to the valley of the Jordan. Here the Wady Jalud offers an easy
incline as far as Beisan, the ancient Bethshean, and every mile of the
country it has traversed so far is private property, and fairly
cultivated. At Beisan it enters upon a region which has, partly owing to
malaria and partly to its insecurity, been abandoned to the Arabs, but
it is the tract of all others which the passage of a railway is likely
to transfigure, for the abundance of the water, which is now allowed to
stagnate in marshes, and which causes its unhealthiness, is destined to
attract attention to its great fertility and natural advantages, which
would, with proper drainage, render it the most profitable region in
Palestine. Owing to the elevation of the springs, which send their
copious streams across the site of Beisan, the rich plain which descends
to the Jordan, five hundred feet below, can be abundantly irrigated. “In
fact,” says Dr. Thomson, describing this place in his “Land and the
Book,” “few spots on earth, and none in this country, possess greater
agricultural and manufacturing advantages than this valley, and yet it
is utterly desolate.”
It needs only a more satisfactory administration on the part of the
government, and the connection of this district with the sea by rail, to
make Beisan an important commercial and manufacturing centre. All kinds
of machinery might be driven at small expense by its abounding brooks,
and then the lovely valley of Jezreel above it, irrigated by the Jalud,
and the Ghor Beisan below, watered in every part by many fertilizing
streams, are capable of sustaining a little nation in and of themselves.
There is a little bit of engineering required to carry the line down to
the valley of the Jordan, here eight hundred feet below the level of the
sea, which it then follows north as far as the Djisr el-Medjamieh. Near
this ancient Roman bridge of three arches, which is used to this day by
the caravans of camels which bring the produce of the Hauran to the
coast, the new railway bridge will cross the Jordan, probably the only
one in the world which will have for its neighbour an actual bridge in
use which was built by the Romans, thus, in this now semi-barbarous
country, bringing into close contact an ancient and a modern
civilization. After crossing the Jordan, the line will still follow the
banks of that river to its junction with the Yarmuk, which it will also
cross, and then traverse a fertile plain of rich alluvium, about five
miles long by four wide, to the base of the ridge which overlooks the
eastern margin of the Sea of Tiberias.
This is the extent to which the survey has been completed. It is not
decided whether to rise from the valley by the shoulder of the ridge
which overlooks the Yarmuk, or to follow the east shore of the Lake of
Tiberias to the Wady Semakh, which offers great advantages for a grade
by which to ascend nearly three thousand feet in about fifteen miles.
This is the toughest bit of engineering on the line, and is in close
proximity to the steep place down which the swine possessed by devils
are said to have rushed into the sea. Once on the plateau it will
traverse the magnificent pasture-lands of Jaulan, across which I rode
four years ago in the spring, when the numerous streams by which it was
watered were flowing copiously, and the tall, waving grass reached
nearly up to my horse's belly.
This rich tract was the one on which it is probable that Job pastured
his flocks and herds—at least, all the local tradition points to this.
It was well populated until comparatively recent times, but the
sedentary inhabitants, the ruins of whose villages dot the country, were
driven out by the Arabs, who now pasture vast herds of cattle upon it,
and droves of horses which are fattened here after their journey from
Mesopotamia previous to being exported to Egypt. The course of the line
across this region has not been definitely fixed, but it will probably
take as southern a direction as possible, so as to tap the grain-growing
country of the Hauran. There may possibly be a short branch to Mezrib,
which is the principal grain emporium, and one of the most important
halting-places on the great pilgrimage road from Damascus to Mecca. It
is calculated that the transport of grain alone from this region to the
coast will suffice to pay a large dividend upon the capital required for
the construction of the road, which will be about one hundred and thirty
miles in length. I do not remember the number of tons annually conveyed
on the backs of camels to Acre and Haifa, but I have seen thousands of
these ungainly animals collected at the gates of both those towns during
the season, and the amount must be something enormous. This does not
include the whole of the Damascus trade, which now finds its way by the
French carriage road across the Lebanon to Beyrout, and which will all
be diverted to the railway, or the produce of the rich country it
traverses between the sea-coast and the Jordan.
The grantees have also secured the right to put steam-tugs upon the Lake
of Tiberias, and under the influence of this new means of transportation
the desolate shores will undergo transformation. The great plain of
Genesareth, across which I rode a month ago, is now a waste of the most
luxuriant wild vegetation, watered by three fine streams, besides being
well supplied with springs. It was celebrated of old for the amount and
variety of its produce, and I have no doubt is again destined to be so.
The plains in which Bethsaida and Capernaum stood formerly are all
covered with heavy vegetation which conceals the extensive ruins of the
cities which once adorned them; and there is a fine back country within
easy reach of the lake which will send its produce to it as soon as
means of transportation are provided. At present there are only half a
dozen sailing-boats on the lake, rather a contrast from the time when
Josephus collected no fewer than two hundred and thirty war-ships with
which to attack Tiberius in the war against the Romans; and the fish
with which it abounded in the days of the miraculous draught are more
miraculously numerous than ever, for fishing as an industry has almost
ceased to exist, and the finny tribe are left undisturbed. There are
some celebrated sulphur baths also on the shores of the lake and within
two miles of the town, which are visited annually by thousands of
patients. I was there during the bathing season, and found them camped
in tents on the margin of the lake, or sweltering in the fetid
atmosphere of the one large bathing-room, in which a crowd of naked and
more or less cutaneous patients were disporting themselves.
The surveying party tell me that they received the greatest kindness and
hospitality from the Arabs in the Jordan valley, who were of a sedentary
tribe, and cultivated the land, and who looked forward with pleasure to
the advent of a railway, and to the chances of employment which it
afforded them. Indeed, both natives and foreigners are not a little
excited at the prospect which is now being opened to them, and which
promises to be the dawn of a new era of prosperity for the country.
NOTE.—Since the above was written, the concession has lapsed in
consequence of difficulties which arose at the last moment in the
formation of the company for carrying out the enterprise; but it is
again in process of renewal, and I have little doubt but that it will be
ultimately accomplished.