The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

The road is picturesque and gives magnificent views of the Lebanon Mountains. The track winds its way up and down the hills, and the western side of the range is so steep that the cars are taken up on cogs after the same manner as on Pike’s Peak, Mount Washington, and the Rigi. There are twenty-five stations, mostly two-story buildings of stone.

The passengers are the conglomerate mixture of humanity found in this part of the Orient. There are scores of Syrians in long coats and trousers, some wearing red fezzes, and others having turbans or handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads. There are Turkish officers in uniform, with swords at their sides, fez-capped boys in silk gowns, and other Moslems in turbans and gowns. There are Mohammedan women clad all in black and wearing black veils. There are pretty Greek girls with bare faces, brown-skinned women from the mountains, and Bedouins, who have ropes tied about the kerchiefs which half shroud their fierce features. There are also Persians, Druses, and Christians of all sorts and conditions.

The trains go slowly in climbing the mountain. The average express makes less than sixteen miles an hour, while the mixed train takes twelve hours to make the ninety-one miles.

For many years the European powers have been scheming for the right to build railroads in this part of the world. One of the biggest and most talked-of projects is a line to open up the rich valley of the Euphrates where Babylon and Nineveh once flourished. It has some of the best lands on the face of the globe, and it has been suggested that it was the site of the Garden of Eden. The British are especially interested in the project because of their irrigation plans for Mesopotamia headed by Sir William Willcocks, the engineer for the Aswan Dam, which has redeemed about seven million acres in Egypt. The Germans won out in the scramble for the concession to build the road to Bagdad. The line was divided into sections and the Germans pushed on the work rapidly. Another concession to part of this line was granted by the Sultan to a group of Americans, but their plans fell through.

As to the resources to be developed by these new roads, they are beyond description enormous. They include rich deposits of coal, oil, and other minerals. Asia Minor is rich agriculturally. The plains of Mesopotamia will raise anything that can be grown in Egypt, and the new irrigation schemes will make them as productive as they were when Nebuchadnezzar was reigning at Babylon. In ancient times that country had a population of more than six million. It has not one fourth as many to-day. I am told that cotton will grow not only there but also throughout Asia Minor, and it may be that one of the chief competitors of our Southern plantations will eventually be found in this now almost waste but potentially rich part of the world.

The famous Berlin-to-Bagdad scheme is not the only evidence of the German Kaiser’s desire to gobble up as much of the Near East as possible. I use the word “gobble” advisedly. According to the Century Dictionary, it means “to swallow in large pieces, to swallow hastily, to seize upon with greed, and to appropriate graspingly.” And that aptly describes the German methods. I have seen German Kultur at work all during this trip.

In the richest parts of Palestine I saw their flourishing colonies. At Jerusalem I saw the great German church built under the very shadow of the Holy Sepulchre, their huge church on Mount Zion beyond the Tower of David, and the enormous limestone hospice erected in honour of Kaiserin Augusta on a commanding slope of the Mount of Olives. It is said that the money with which the site was bought and some of that used in the building was a silver wedding present to the Empress. It was known that she greatly loved Palestine, and her friends planned this memorial as a silver wedding gift. The hospice is several hundred feet above Jerusalem, and standing upon its roof on a bright day one can look across the hills of Judea and see the silvery thread of the Jordan and the shining Dead Sea with the blue mountains of Moab beyond.

The Kaiser was no respecter of persons, either living or dead. The site of his big church was purchased by him of Sultan Abdul Hamid when he visited him in Constantinople. He went there on his way to the Holy Land, and while hobnobbing with the Sultan got him to sell him this tract for twenty-four thousand dollars. The land, however, was not large enough, so the Germans by a clever trick purchased for sixteen thousand dollars the American cemetery which adjoined the original tract.

The Emperor of Germany when he made his trip through the Holy Land created as great a sensation as Theodore Roosevelt when he cavorted through Europe. Kaiser Wilhelm and his empress started in at Beirut and crossed the mountains of Lebanon to Baalbek and Damascus. They then returned to Beirut and took ship down the coast, past Tyre and Sidon, to the Bay of Acre. Here horses were waiting for them and they rode down around the slopes of Mount Carmel, over the plains of Sharon to Jaffa, and thence up the hills of Judea to Jerusalem. There were about a thousand in the party, and it required one thousand two hundred and fifty mules and horses to carry them and their baggage. The Emperor himself had a staff of one hundred and twenty, who ate at his own tables, and there were in addition one hundred and forty naval and military officers. The Empress also had her ladies-in-waiting with her. One hundred and seventy-five high Turks and officials were supplied by the Sultan as a special escort. The Emperor’s tour was so arranged that he had four camps. He slept in a different camp every night and had a new one for each meal.

Although the journey was made in October, the weather was hot, and the chief trouble was to supply the expedition with water. Some died of thirst, and between Haifa and Jaffa six horses dropped dead of sunstroke. It was so hot that the trip to the Dead Sea and the Jordan was not attempted, but the Emperor went to Bethlehem and other places near by. He remained seven days at Jerusalem, during which time he consummated his purchases of land.