The Romance of a Road

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 124, 27 May 1937, Page 8

The Romance of a Road

NEW ZEALANDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF MODERN ENGINEERING

The wild mountain gorges of Kurdistan (a turbulent State on the borders of Persia, Iraq, and Turkey and nowadays belonging in part to all three countries) are still the home of brigand chiefs who from time immemorial have .plundered passing caravans, looted the flocks of wealthy nomads and prosecuted relentless blood-feuds, says Mr. E. O. Lorimer, in John o’ London’s Weekly. For five years these terrific defiles echoed to the sound of blasting powder, as thousands of tons of rock were dislodged to make way for the well-graded, cambered, surfaced motor road along which lorries can now carry loads from the plains of Iraq to tho plateaux of Persia.

It fell to the lot of a young New Zealand engineer, in tho service of the Public Works Department of the Government of India, to construct this romantic road where Nature had never intended a road should be, and he tells a vivid, vigorous story of the country and its great personalities, its summer torrents, its winter rains and ice and snow, its unexplored, bat-haunted caverns, its historic fortresses and buried treasure, in a book which deserves unstinted praise, “Road Through Kurdistan.” Across Five Ranges. Mr. A. M. Hamilton began work at Arbil, in the Iraqi plains, “the most ancient of all the inhabited cities of the earth . . . which even 3000 years ago was a very old city that had held the temples of gods and goddesses since Sumerian times,” and still raises its truncated cone above the plains while its coevals, Babylon and Ur, are buried under desert sands. “The line of the proposed road rose steadily from Arbil and crossed no fewer than five mountain ranges before it reached tho Persian frontier at a height of 6000 feet.” When work began, the only labour available was that of “Persian and Arab coolies accustomed to hand tools and entirely ignorant of machinery,” who had to bo trained in the use of pneumatic drills, steam rollers, winches, and steel bridges. There were no repair workshops nearer than Baghdad, 300 miles to the south. Machinery had to bo shipped out from England to Basrah on tho Persian Gulf, 000 miles from the seat of operations, forwarded thence by rail to Kirkuk, thence by lorry and ultimately conveyed on camel and mule-back.

When his team of workmen was at its maximum, Mr. Hamilton had under him a heterogeneous crowd of Kurds and Arabs, Persians, Assyrians, Armenians, and Indians, all of whom —to tho undying credit of their leader—developed “a real enthusiasm for their job.” A Pooling of Talent.

The Arabs excelled in earth-digging, having an openly expressed disliko of handling rock; the Persians mastered the complicated technique of roclc-blast-ing and bridge-building; tho Assyrians proved skilled stone-masons; tho Armenians were the best lorry and tractor drivers; tho Persian Kurds tho most professional all-rouud labourers. Singlehanded, tho only white man among this horde, many of whom were known excriminals and murderers, Mr. Hamilton had to act as surveyor, engineer, mechanic, instructor, doctor, paymaster, and law-giver, while carrying on diplomatic negotiations with potentially hostile chiefs, whose lightest word could have rendered work impossible. “To the south, north, and west thero were clashes between the tribes and operations by tbo Iraq Army and the R.A.F.; yet our work remained inviolate. Relatively speaking, tho road seemed to be a sanctuary of peace in a land of turmoil.” Bridging the Gorge. When at last machinery and material were to hand and a workshop lorry catered for immediate repairs and teams had been trained to work overhead steel cables and mighty winches, the great day came to throw a steel bridge over the untamed river of the Rowanduz. Inch by inch eight}' tons of steel were manoeuvred out into space across tho ravine, high above the river bed; inch by inch the great bridge crept out, controlled by a whole army of winches —“the gap grew narrower, it was now 1 but a }'ard, now but a foot . • • when