The Bedouins are now causing the contractors considerable trouble. The road will take a large part of the pilgrimage traffic, which, it has been estimated, is worth to Arabia some ten million dollars a year. Much of the money goes to the owners of the camels and the leaders of the caravans, who are Bedouins. During the building of the road many of these have been employed in the construction and in supplying the other labourers with food. As the present work has neared its completion, many of the Bedouins have lost their jobs. They are objecting to the railway and have torn up the tracks in many places. The result is a great unrest which threatens to cause serious disturbance.
The traffic on the Constantinople-Damascus and Mecca railways will be made up largely of men on their way to worship at Mecca and Medina. Now, with nothing but camels to carry them, it is estimated that about four hundred thousand go there every year, and it is believed that the railway will increase the traffic from fifty to one hundred per cent. Christians and other unbelievers will not be carried to the holy cities, although they may make tours to Petra and other parts of Arabia.
This Mecca railway will have special accommodations for Mohammedans. Certain of the carriages will be fitted up as mosques, so that the travellers can perform their devotions during the journey. The praying carriages will be luxuriously furnished. The floors will be covered with Persian carpets, and around the sides will be painted verses from the Koran in letters of gold. A chart will indicate the direction of Mecca, so that the Faithful can always face the right way when praying, and there will also be a minaret on the top of the car six and a half feet high.
The Mecca road is a narrow-gauge with French rolling stock. The material has been imported from Europe, the ties being of iron to withstand the white ants, which eat anything wooden. One of the great difficulties of construction has been the lack of water. The road goes for long stretches through the desert, and many of the trains carry large tanks to keep the boilers full.
I travelled over a part of the Mecca road on my way from the Holy Land north to Damascus. Leaving Tiberias in the early morning, I was rowed by four lusty Syrians across the Sea of Galilee to Semakh, which is the station on the lower end of that sea and the place where a branch line runs off to Haifa. From there northward we skirted the east side of the Sea of Galilee, passing the hills upon which our Saviour preached. We rode up the valley of the Yarmuk, a stream almost as large as the Jordan, which loses itself in the Jordan farther south. We climbed the foothills of Lebanon, and at about three thousand feet above the surface of the Sea of Galilee reached the rich plain of Hauran, the great bread basket of the Bedouins. It grows wheat and other grain, and the land near the track was covered with poppies, golden daisies, and wild red hollyhocks.
The students of the American University at Beirut number nearly a thousand, and, whether Christian, Jew, or Moslem, must study the Bible
The stones for the Tuberculosis Hospital at Juneh had to be carried up one at a time on the backs of camels
