RAILWAY IN THE HOLY LAND.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 4127, 25 September 1883, Page 4

RAILWAY IN THE HOLY LAND.

Ottoman Enterprise in Palestine,

Writing frem Haifa on June 13th, a correspondent says :—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 Xew Zealandia 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 realisation of the prediction is becoming imminent. The preliminary survey has just been completed as far the Jordan, of the Hamidie, or Acre and Damascus Kailway, which bids fair to be the iirst Palestine railway. It is called the Hamidid 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, sonic 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 tho 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 whichitoffersfrom tin engineering point of view. Starting from Acre, it will follow tho 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 the .short branch 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 tho Galilee hills, and debouch into the plain of Esdraelon. This plain it will traverse in its entire lenghth. Tho 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 tho plain of Jcsreel to the valley of the Jordan. Here the Wade Jalud offers an easy incline as far as Beisan, the ancient Bethshean, and every milo 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, oeen abandoned to the Arabs, but it is tho 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 tho springs, which send their copious streams across the site of Beisan, the rich plain which descends to the Jordan, five hundred feet bciow, can be abundantly irrigated. "In fact," says Dr. Thompson, 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." There is a little bit of engineering required to carry tho line down to the valley of the Jordan, bore 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 tho produce of the Hrfuran to the coast, tho 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 civilisation. 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. 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. Tho great plain of Gennesareth, across which I rode a month ago, is now a waste of tho 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. Tho plains in which Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum stood formerly are all covered with heavy vegetation, which conceals the extensive rains 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 mean? of transportation are provided. At present there ore only two sailing boats on the lake, rather a contrast from the time when Josephus collected no fewer than 280 warships with which to attack Tiberius in tho war against the Romans; and tho fish with which it abounded in the days of the miraculous draught are more miraculously numerous than ever, for fishing'as nn industry has ceased to exist, and the finny tribe are left undisturbed. There are some celebrated sulphur baths also on tho shores , of the lake and within two miles of the i

town, which are visited annually t>T thousands of patients. '

The sun-eying party tell me that they received the greatest kindness and hespj. tality from tlio Arabs in the Jordan valley who wero of a sedentary tribe, and cult!-' rated 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 ,-. 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 that country.