acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

THE ROAD TO ALEXANDRETTA 447
thence go through Aleppo. It was an earlier scheme
than the one now brought so near completion by
German enterprise, prompted by a great ulterior purpose
; for we had old traditions of trade by this route
to maintain, and the enterprising commercial instincts
which had created the trade in spite of all difficulties
sought to maintain and increase it by a railway when
caravan traffic became inadequate. How this scheme
and others fell through, and how the Germans at
last stepped in, make surely the strangest and most
romantic story of any railway ever begun or proposed
—the story of a railway that became part of a great
national plot against the State which first projected
it. Most fitly is it an Eastern railway, with Bagdad
as one of its chief stations ; nor is its history yet
complete.
A very beautiful piece of country extends from
Beilan to the sea - shore. The road winds over a
breadth of undulating falling land, between fields
and pines and oaks ; and as it descends yet lower,
passes carob-trees and hedges of aloes. On this April
afternoon I went among green grass and spring
flowers in air that was wonderfully soft and balmy ;
and behind me rose the five or six thousand feet of
Amanus, rugged and steep to the sea, showing scrub
and wood and rock. At the foot of the mountains
came the plain, a mile or more in width, with datepalms
here and there, and beyond it the Mediterranean,
blue and unruffled, and sleeping in sunlight.
Then the level road, long and straight and dusty,
passed marshes and springs, and at last entered
Alexandretta.
On the way into
the town one comes upon places
and traditions connecting the district with an odd
assortment of figures. Of the line springs which
break out at the foot of the mountains and form
marshes tradition calls one " Jacob's Well," and brings
home the fact that this is part of the land of biblical
history. At this well it is said Jacob watered his
flocks, and in the confident way of tradition details