The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1919-11-02

1 Aful5 for Nazareth and Judd for Je-
rusalem.
! And five years ago only the hardi-
est tourists dared the steamship lan1-
| ing at Jsffa, which led them up 20
4 Jerusalemi e.,
| The immovable east is beginning to
THREE MONTHS INSTEAD OF A
! WEEK
. said above that at present the dis
! tance between Cairo and Constant
nople could be covered by rail in seven
| days. Theoretically, IT can. l know of
nobody who has succeeded in doing it.
| however. If there is anybody who has
done it, doubtless he spent twice as
much time in recovering from it. so
far as I know. am one of the first
| to cover the distance by rail. 1 took
three months to it. y
| I rode all the distance in passenger
carriages, which means more than, at
| first. may be thought. l carried 10
| revolver and no can of insect powder
| The former I mad no occasion to use;
as to the latter, 1 spent 40 weary hours
in ''firss class" compartment on the
Anatolian railway longing for the
| luxury of a neat, newly disinfected
/ freight car 1 was wrecked only once,
and spent a thoughtful half day some
| where between Damascus and Kayak,
watching butcher bird impaling
! carried no stove and no bedding
until I reached Aleppo, but when five
days on the Bagdad and Anatolidn
railway finally turned me up on the
quay at Haidar Pasha to wait for the
Bosphorus ferry it took three portefs
/ to carry my kit.
I tried them all-the Palestine Mill
tary railway (British), the Chemin de
Fer du Hejaz (Turkish), the Damas-
| HONS ct Prolongements (French) the
| Chemin de Fer Imperial Ottoman uu
| Bagdad (German) and the Chemin de
Fer de Anatolie. If you want to know
who built Baalbek, ask Baedeker. II
/ you want to know how much rupee,
| a Tunisian franc and a Canadian dime
are worth in Egyptian piastres, ask
Thomas Cook. But if you want 10
know at what stations on the Bagdad
railway the water is drlnkapie, ask
me.
| Since the exigencies of the military sit
uatiop and. not the comfort of the trav-
elers, is the controlling factor in the oper-
alton of all near eastern railways Just
now, the rolling stock used is secondary
consideration. British locomotives and
| old Egyptian state railway cars predom-
| mate on the Palestine Military railway
| Q rode into the Jerusalem station behind
| a London & Southwestern locomotive);
ancient, implanted wooden coaches, Still
| bearing the faded crescent and star of
the Turkish railways, make up the trains
| of the Turkish one meter gauge railway
+! from Haifa into the fine new Kanawat
station in Damascus; a mixture of
IDamas- HONS ct Prolongements cars,
Egyptian State railways cars. and Ger
man cars, are used from Damascus into
the French station at Aleppo; German,
Turkish and some Belgian rolling stock
make up what remains for use on the
Bagdad and Anatolian railways. EX-
Dol tt11n ito
way and the Bagdad railway, the rails,
too begin to show the result of four
iracking years of war. Wrecked bridges
still lie under the new bridges built by
the British army in the wake of the re-
treating Turks. Half-burned and Quilted
railway stations predominant. Farther
north, piles of wrecked Turkish war ma
terial are heaped at intervals along the
line. Hastily abandoned construction
camps dot the mountains along the Bag
dad railway.
The Palestine Military railway, how
ever, is built to last and It's through
trains from Kantara to Haifa run at a
scheduled speed of 81 miles an hour,
which Just now is more than twice as
fast as the Bagdad railway operates its
trains. The Bagdad railway. however,
has been constructed with German thor
oughness. Its stations are solid, two
story stone structures, not frequently
fitted with loopholes for defense pur-
poses. Some of it's stations isolated in
Upper Mesopotaclia are equipped with
wireless.
GREAT VARIETY OF SCENERY
When through trains are operated be-
tween Cairo and Constantinople and tour
lists are able to make this most interest
ling of all railway journeys in the COM
| fort it demands, it will be found to fur
nish an astonishing variety. Mountains
which rival the Rockies, gorges which
dip far below sea level, great sand des-
erts, lakes of fresh water and fields of
ripening grain-these are all included in
] the eastern panorama it unfolds.
From Bah ell Hadid station in Cairo,
| the train crosses the green flatlands of
Egypt to meet the canal at Kantara.
Thence, it strikes oblquely across the
deep sand of the Sinai desert. coating
the travellers with dust until it reaches
the Mediterranean coast at Ell Arish.
Hugging the coast, it moves up to GAIA
and the green hills of Palestine reveal
themselves all the way up to Mount Car
mel at the foot of which nestles the
little white coast town of Haifa. From
here, one strikes sharply inland through
the plain Of Esdraelon, with low hills
rearing themselves against the horizon
far off on both sides. Three hours out
of Haifa, the train begins to dip into the
furnace of Galilee and finally touches it's
hot blue shores at Shem2k, far below the
level of the sea. Once out of Shemak, it
climbes slowly up through the Galilean
hills-four hours of wild scenery with the
oleanders nodding at the bottom of
| gorge far below on one side of the car
and waterfall after waterfall plunging
from far above on the other side Quite
without warning, 1t energies onto the
thigh plateau of the Hauran and at the
mud town of Deraa, it meets the famous
Hedjaz railway and turns to the north
for Damascus over a country as flat as
a floor.
From the seven rivers of Damascus and
their chorus of bullfrogs, the train winds
through the low Damascus hill to the
Junction of Kayak. whence ii strikes
north for Aleppo. with the rugged chain
of the Anti-Lebanon mountains on one
hand and the fringes of the SYRIAN dcs-
crit on tive other. From Aleppo it clmbcs
Through fhe Amanus> range and dips into
the hot cotton fields of C;ilicia 1t spends
a half day winding up from the Iowlands
and into the Taurus mountains and quite
without warning. it piunges into the
Taurus tunnels and spends an hour Of
/ 80 very long minutes in trsversing them
Emerging finally into the table-lands
around Konia. II strikes into the rich
fields of AnatoIia and comes hack to sea.
level at the Sea of Marmora- Thereafter,
lii Is only couple of hours until the tall
tawdry. wooden houses of the fringes Of
lConstantinople appear
At present, however. the journey from
Cairo to Constantinople by rail is not
the easy, simple matter .which, 1t is to
be hoped, it soon will be. Only the lift