acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

—;
456 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
bygones in remembrance while awaiting a future
clearly visible in the making. There was good reason,
too, for these thoughts of a beholder, for here I was
looking upon one of the historic gateways to the East
across those mountains, the very way upon which I
had recently travelled, ran the immemorial road from
the Mediterranean to Bagdad, the Persian Gulf, Persia,
and, in the end, to India. During all the ages that
the Mediterranean East and the Farther East have
known intercourse it had asserted itself as the natural
land route, the highway alike of trading caravans and
invading armies. The battle of the Issus, for instance,
fought a few miles av/ay in my rear, nearly 2300
years ago, had been in fact a battle for this road,
with the East at stake, between the Persian king
and Alexander as a European invader seeking world
dominion. And the victory of the Issus was followed
by that of Arbela,—far on the same road to Bagdad,
—and after Arbela, as all m.en know, came Alexander's
invasion of India.
In the last half-century—and perhaps more than
once in that space of time—a British railway might
have been constructed hence along this historic route,
at least as far as to the Persian Gulf, giving the route
a new and transcending importance (in the light of
current events how profoundly such a railway must
have influenced world history !). But the value of
the great opportunity was never understood by us
except by the few,—the golden chance was lost, and
presently a shrewder Power, a Power with definite
ambitions in the East and a desire for world dominion,
took up the railway project we had short-sightedly
neglected. So now here was Germany building the
railway, and confidently looking forward to running
trains from Berlin to Bagdad. Here, too, was Germany
just beginning the harbour works which were
to make of Alexandretta a great port, as the western
outlet for Mesopotamia and much besides. The
future of the Gulf of Alexandretta, of the highway to
the East and the wide regions through which the