Cyprus: Historical and Descriptive

by Franz von Löher

“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.”