PROJECTED RAILWAY ACROSS ASIA MINOR.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 241, 12 October 1888, Page 8

PROJECTED RAILWAY ACROSS ASIA MINOR.

The consular reports just issued by the Government, include a paper from our Consul at Sivas, in Asia Minor, which presents some interesting details relative to the projected railway from Scutari, the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople, to Bagdad on the Tigris. In August last an imperial irade was issued, sanctioning the construction of the proposed line by a syndicate of English financiers. A French company, in favour of adopting a narrow-gauge system, also made a bid for the contract, but the Sultan decided for Messrs Alt and Zeei'elder, the British competitors, and for a wide-gauge road.

it is estimated that the line can be built at a cost of £15,500,000. Its length is 1,400 miles, or more than one hundred miles greater than that of all the present Turkish railway systems, European and Asiatic combined. Once in successful operation, the road will, as Mr Jewett writes, ' create new Asia Minor, open to the trade of the world a vast territory now closed, totally change the character of the country, and practically advance Turkey in Asia from, say the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth century.' Navigation from Bagdad, the terraiuus on the Tigris, to the Persian Gulf, is easy. A new through highway to the East, independent of the Suez Canal, will thus be open which will bring Europe nine or ten days nearer to India than it is now.

A partial idea of the commercial importance of the enterprise can be gained by a glance at the resources and needs of the Country that the railroad, if built, will put in communication with the Ottoman capital and with the world at large. At present Constantinople spends annually about fifteen million dollars abroad, chieliy in Russia, for grain, butter, flour and meat. These articles are all produced in Asiatic Turkey in sufficient abundance to supply the entire empire and still leave a lar^e surplus for exportation. About Bagdad the grain product is immense, and along the Persian Gulf wheat is not (infrequently used as fuel, so rich are the crops. Notwithstanding the primitiveness of the present modes of transportation, gums, fruits, wool, hides, tallow, opium, vegetables dyes, mohair, silk cocoons, rugs, carpets and silver-wire work are exported in great quantities. The whole region u..ounds in minerals, including coal, lead, copper and salt. In tho hills around Arbela and Kerkook are inexhaustible springs of petroleum and naphtha. 'Mr Jewett says: «As to the probable needs of this great extent of country when opened up by the railroad, it may be said that, they include everything. Practically nothing is produced in the manufacturing line now. With the advent of tho railroad, with the new towns and cities that will spring up, the new resources and industries developed, and especially with the new ideas and wants which civilisation creates, there _ will be a new market and a constantly increasing demand for almost everything which Europe and America manufacture. ' The immediate advantages that will accrue to the Ottoman empire from the development of the agricultural and mineral resources of its Asiastic territory, and from the establishment of manufacturing industries, are by no means the only ones to be looked for in this solution of the transportation problem. With theroadbuilt, a long step will have been taken toward restoring Constantinople to its old preeminence as the emporium of the East. Nor does it require a violent exercise of the imagination to picture Bagdad as again possessed of the wealth and much of the splendour of which it boasted in the days when Haroun al Raschid took his incognito strolls through its thoroughfares. The locomotive is a mighty energiser, and it is making its way right to the centers of the ancient Asiatic civilisation on more lines than one.'

At the Supreme Court to-day probate was granted in the estates of the following deceased persons :— Ruth Oliver (Mr Wm. Cooper), Thomas Wi.liam Weatherall (Mr Baume), and A<rnes Kilgour (Mr Brookfield). In re William Ford (deceased), Mr Theo. Cooper applied for letters of administration, and that one surety be dispensed with. The application was granted. In re Gray v. Anderson (Mr Button), summonsed- directions for taking accounts, the order was made as prayed.