Chapter XXXII: Cyprus and the Euphrates Valley Railway

Again must Cyprus bear a prominent position in the eyes of the world. For many years eminent statesmen, soldiers, and engineers have been proclaiming the advisability of making Cyprus the point through which that grand scheme, the Euphrates Valley Railway, soon we hope to be a reality, would receive its principal sources of traffic, and forming it into the terminal station of a line of railway and steamers destined to chain us more firmly to our Indian possessions, and to open again the long-deserted or neglected land that lies between it and the Persian Gulf.

Major-General Sir F. Goldsmid, C.B., K.C.S.I., who has devoted a considerable portion of his time to this scheme, has thrown such valuable light upon the subject that we should be wanting in our duty to our readers if we did not give some brief idea of the information his valuable paper affords us.

The geographical position of Cyprus, now under British rule, makes the island a fitting guardian of Upper Syria, Cœlo Syria, and almost of Palestine, and in the hands of Great Britain is an invaluable acquisition, and worth any amount of land which might be purchased on the neighbouring Asiatic coast.

The distance to the several ports on the mainland is not great; indeed, the island is said to be visible on a clear day from Seleucia. A railway terminus for the Persian Gulf line might be reached in a very few hours, and fair weather boats, calculated to carry over a thousand passengers, troops or civilians, might be used at certain times at inconsiderable cost.

Of Larnaka, as a port, very little information can be obtained; but fifteen years ago it received 324 vessels of 54,340 tons, and sent out 321 vessels of 53,458 tons. In 1876 there were entered 457, and cleared 483 vessels of 92,926 and 91,690 tons respectively.

At Limasol, in 1863, 493 vessels were entered of 32,980 tons. The present harbour of Famagusta has a superficial extent of nearly eighty acres, to which a depth of five and a half fathoms might be readily given; but there is only a space of about five acres which can be relied upon for the actual reception of ships.

M. Collas, a French writer, experienced in Turkey and the Turks, thinks that, with ordinary engineering skill, a harbour might be formed here of more than 148 acres in extent. The opening of this harbour would also give, in the opinion of M. Collas, an immense impetus to the export of cotton, which might be grown up to the amount not far short of 30,000 tons, a high figure of productiveness.

Having thus shown how Cyprus is capable, so far as harbours are concerned, of fulfilling her position as the terminus of the Euphrates Valley Railway, let us look to some of the various routes suggested for this line. Five different schemes were selected as the most important by the Committee which sat in 1872.

1st. A line starting from Alexandretta or Suedia, near the mouth of the Orontes, passing through Aleppo to the Euphrates, at or near Jabah Castle, and thence carried down the right bank of the river to Kuwait, on the western side of the Persian Gulf.

2nd. A line starting from one of the same points, crossing the Euphrates at Belio, passing down the left bank of the river, or the right bank of the Tigris, to a point nearly opposite Baghdad, recrossing the Euphrates, and proceeding to Kuwait.

3rd. A line starting as before, crossing the Euphrates at Bir, thence going round to Orfah and Diarbekir, and following the right bank of the Tigris as the last.

4th. A similar line, only following the left bank of the Tigris.

5th. A line starting from Tripoli, and proceeding across the desert by way of Damascus and Palmyra to the Euphrates, whence it might follow one of the preceding routes.

Which of these routes will eventually be adopted, is still the subject of much discussion.

Mr. W. P. Andrew, F.R.G.S., who for thirty years has devoted much time and attention to endeavouring to carry out this design, has furnished us with an admirable report on this project. We will give a short sketch in his own words:

“In the proposal to restore this ancient route—once the highway of the world’s commerce and the track of the heroes of early history—by the construction of a railway to connect the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, we have at hand an invaluable and perfectly efficient means at once of thwarting the designs of Russia, if they should assume a hostile character, of marching hand in hand with her if her mission be to carry civilisation to distant lands, and of competing with her in the peaceful rivalry of commerce.

“On every ground, therefore, the proposed Euphrates Valley Railway is an undertaking eminently deserving our attention, and the support and encouragement of our Government.

“The countries which our future highway to India will traverse have been, from remote antiquity, the most interesting in the world. On the once fertile plains, watered by the Euphrates and Tigris, the greatest and most glorious nations of antiquity arose, flourished, and were overthrown.

“Twice in the world’s history, mankind commenced the race of civilisation on the Mesopotamian rivers. Twice the human family diverged from their banks to the east, the west, and the north. Arts and sciences made the first feeble steps of their infancy, upon the shores of these rivers.

“Very early in history we know that Babylon was a great manufacturing city, famed for the costly fabric of its looms. At a more recent date the Chaldean kings made it a gorgeous metropolis—the fairest and the richest then on earth. Alexander of Macedon made it the port of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf; and he proposed to render it the central metropolis of his empire.

“The countries through which the Euphrates flows were formerly the most productive in the world. Throughout these regions the fruits of temperate and tropical climes, grew in bygone days in luxurious profusion; luxury and abundance were universally diffused. The soil everywhere teemed with vegetation; much of this has since passed away. Ages of despotism and misrule have rendered unavailing the bounty of nature; but the land is full of hidden riches. The natural elements of its ancient grandeur still exist in the inexhaustible fertility of the country, and in the chivalrous character and bearing of many of the tribes; and the day cannot be far distant when it is destined to resume its place amongst the fairest and most prosperous regions of the globe.

“The wondrous fertility of Mesopotamia was, in early times, carried to its utmost limit by means of irrigation canals, with which the country was everywhere intersected, and some of the largest of which were navigable. These excited the wonder and interest of Alexander the Great, who, after his return from the conquest of India, examined them personally, steering the boat with his own hand. He employed a great number of men to repair and cleanse these canals.

“Herodotus, speaking of Babylonia, says: ‘Of all the countries I know, it is without question the best and the most fertile. It produces neither figs, nor vines, nor olives; but in recompense the earth is suitable for all sorts of grain, of which it yields always two hundred per cent, and in years of extraordinary fertility as much as three hundred per cent.’

“These regions need only again to be irrigated by the life-giving waters pouring down ever cool and plentiful from Ararat—that great landmark of primæval history, now the vast natural boundary-stone of the Russian, Turkish, and Persian empires—to yield once more in abundance almost everything that is necessary or agreeable to man. Many acres now wasted, save when in early spring they are wildernesses of flowers, may be covered with cotton, tending to the employment of the million spindles of our land.

“It is not too much to say that no existing or projected railroad can compare in point of interest and importance with that of the Euphrates Valley. It will bring two quarters of the globe into juxtaposition, and three continents, Europe, Asia, and Australia, into closer relation. It will bind the vast population of Hindustan by an iron link with the people of Europe. It will inevitably entail the colonisation and civilisation of the great valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, the resuscitation in a modern shape of Babylon and Nineveh, and the re-awakening of Ctesiphon and Bagdad of old.

“Where is there in the world any similar undertaking which can achieve results of such magnitude, fraught with so many interests to various nations? And who can foresee what ultimate effects may be produced by improved means of communication in the condition of Hindoos, Chinese, and other remote peoples?

“Although various routes have been suggested with a view of bringing Great Britain, by means of railway communication, into closer connection with India and her other dependencies in the East, and of securing at the same time the immense political and strategic desideratum of an alternative highway to our Eastern possessions, there is none which combines in itself so many advantages as the ancient route of the Euphrates; the route of the emperors Trajan and Julian, in whose steps, in more recent times, the great Napoleon intended to follow, when the Russian campaign turned his energies in another direction. The special advantages which render this route superior to all others are briefly these:

“It is the direct route to India. It is the shortest and the cheapest both for constructing and working a railway; so free from engineering difficulties, that it almost appears as though designed by the hand of nature to be the highway of nations between the east and the west; the most surely defensible by England—both of its termini being on the open seas; and the most likely to prove remunerative.

“Both in an engineering and a political point of view, the Euphrates route undoubtedly possesses great advantages over any of the others which have been proposed.

“All the routes which have been suggested from places on the Black Sea are open to the fatal objection that, while they would be of the greatest service to Russia, they would be altogether beyond the control of Great Britain, while the engineering difficulties with which they are surrounded, are of themselves sufficient to exclude them from practical consideration.

“This has been fully established by the evidence of the witnesses examined by the Select Committee of the House of Commons, which lately investigated the merits of the various proposals for connecting the Mediterranean and the Black Seas with the Persian Gulf.

“In the course of the investigation by the Committee, it was demonstrated that the proposed Euphrates Valley Railway is an eminently feasible undertaking in an engineering sense; that the route of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf is decidedly preferable in respect of climate to that by Egypt and the Red Sea; that as regards the safety and facility of the navigation, the Persian Gulf also has by far the advantage; that the proposed undertaking would be of great commercial moment, and if not immediately profitable, at all events that it would be so at a date not far distant; and, finally, that it would be of the highest political and strategic importance to this country.

“A railway through Mesopotamia, as a route to India, would not at first be productive of much income to a company from traffic, but in a few years—certainly before the railway could be finished—the cultivation of grain would increase a hundred-fold, and would go on increasing a thousand fold, and would attain to a magnitude and extension quite impossible to calculate, because bad harvests are almost unknown in these parts, for there is always plenty of rain and a hot sun to ripen the corn. Populous villages would spring up all along the line, as there is abundance of sweet water everywhere. Cereals can be grown there so cheaply, that no country the same distance from England—say for instance Russia—could compete with it at all. And if Great Britain finds it necessary to rely more on the importation of foreign corn, where could a better field be found than the fertile plains of Mesopotamia, which has all the advantages of climate, soil, and sun in its favour?

“The establishment of steam communication by the Messageries Maritimes on the route of the Red Sea to Calcutta and other Eastern ports, shows the importance attached by the French to the extension of their commercial relations with the East. A Russian line of steamers, also, has lately been established, to run between Odessa and Bombay by the Suez Canal route. Even those who see no danger in the policy of annexation pursued by Russia, will admit that the Russian roads and railways now being pushed towards Persia and Afghanistan, if designed with pacific intentions, prove, at all events, the anxiety of the Russian Government to compete with us for the trade of Central Asia, the Punjaub, and Northern India.

“The substitution of Kurrachee for Bombay as the European port of India would, even by the Red Sea route, give us an advantage of some five hundred miles; but if the Euphrates route were once established, the adoption of Kurrachee as the European port of India would necessarily follow, and India would thus be brought upwards of a thousand miles nearer to us than at present; while during the monsoon months, the gain would be still greater, as the route between the Persian Gulf and Kurrachee is not exposed to the severity of the monsoon, which, it is well known, renders a divergence of some five hundred miles necessary during a portion of the year on the voyage from Bombay to Aden.

“When the railway system of the Indus is completed, Kurrachee will be in continuous railway communication with Calcutta and with the gates of Central Asia at the Kyber and Bolan Passes, and it will thus become the natural basis of operations in the event either of any internal commotion in India, or of aggression on our north-western frontier.

“The grand object desired, is to connect England with the north-west frontier of India by steam transit through the Euphrates and Indus valleys. The latter will render movable to either the Kyber or the Bolan—the two gates of India—the flower of the British army cantoned in the Punjaub; and the Euphrates and Indus lines being connected by means of steamers, we should be enabled to threaten the flank and rear of any force advancing through Persia towards India. So that, by this great scheme, the invasion of India would be placed beyond even speculation, and it is evident that the great army of India of three hundred thousand men being thus united to the army of England, the mutual support they would render each other, would quadruple the power and ascendancy of this country, and promote powerfully the progress, the freedom, and the peace of the world.

“The Euphrates and Indus lines together would, moreover, secure for us almost a monopoly of the trade with Central Asia, enabling us to meet Russia, our great competitor in these distant fields of commercial enterprise, on more than equal terms.

“But it is not on commercial considerations that I would urge the claims of the Euphrates Valley Railway. It is on imperial grounds that the scheme commends itself to our support.

“I believe that the establishment of the Euphrates route would add incalculably to our prestige throughout Europe and the East, and would do more to strengthen our hold on India than any other means that could be devised.

“The Euphrates Valley Railway, as proposed from the Gulf of Scanderoon to the Persian Gulf, has been specially designed with a view to its ultimately forming part of a through line from Constantinople to the head of the Persian Gulf; while it is capable also of being in due time extended eastwards to Kurrachee, the port of India nearest to Europe.

“The line from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf has been demonstrated to be eminently practicable and easy, while the other portions of the route between Constantinople and India are not. While capable of forming part of a through line, it would at the same time be complete in itself, and independent of any disturbances in Europe—the only portion, in fact, of a through line of railway which would be always, and under all circumstances, at the absolute control of this country.

“It would always be to this country the most important portion of any through line; and, indeed, I believe a through line could not be constructed, except at overwhelming cost, without the assistance of a port in Northern Syria. It would, moreover, provide us with a complete alternative route to India, and would thus at once secure to this country advantages admitted to be of the highest national moment.

“It is for these reasons that during the long period in which I have devoted myself to the advocacy of the Euphrates route to India, I have thought it expedient to urge upon our own Government and that of Turkey, the special claims of that section only which would connect the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf.

“The objection that, although the Euphrates Valley Railway would afford us the undoubted advantage of an alternative, a shorter, and a more rapid means of communication with India, it would still leave a considerable portion of the journey to be accomplished by sea, and that consequently it would accelerate our communications with the East in a minor degree only, is sufficiently disposed of by the circumstances already pointed out; that a railway from a point on the Mediterranean, at or near Scanderoon, to the head of the Persian Gulf, would naturally form part of a through line of railway from Constantinople to India, if at a future time it should be considered necessary or desirable to construct the remaining sections.”