The Railway Conquest of the World

by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

A MASONRY BRIDGE ON THE HOLY RAILWAY, SHOWING SOLIDITY OF CONSTRUCTION AND MOUNTAINOUS CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY

Yet the authorities scarcely anticipated that these marauders would wage such a relentless war against the advance of the railway as did eventually come to pass. Yet it was not surprising. The Bedouins realised that the completion of the railway would bring their life of pillage and murder to an end, and accordingly they challenged every foot of its advance. Sometimes they won, massacred the encampment, and destroyed the line for some distance; at others they lost and were routed right and left. The story of the Mahdi’s opposition to the British penetration of Egypt was repeated in Palestine and Arabia, only, if anything, with more determined fury. The soldiers worked with their arms beside them, and protected by a line of guards thrown out some distance around the railhead.

The military commandant was given a free hand to keep back the savage tribes in such a manner as he considered expedient, in order to permit the engineers to lay the metals as fast as possible, and without fear of being molested. When the work was inaugurated the Turkish Government appointed a strong man to the command of the protective troops. It was a responsible and dangerous position, for the authorities recognised from bitter experience the implacable fury of these tribesmen when fully roused. Field-Marshal Kaisim Pasha was appointed to the military directorship, and he proved the right man in the right place. His reputation and grim determination to subdue lawlessness were well known to the bandits, and the Government hoped that his appointment to the protection of the enterprise would strike terror into the hearts of the Bedouins. But far from it. It appeared to urge them to greater daring, and they hung on his flanks relentlessly, cutting off stragglers ruthlessly, and keeping him constantly on the alert. The Field-Marshal was kept in a state of perpetual anxiety, because he never knew upon which side or where he would be attacked next. Brushes were almost of daily occurrence, and the success of one side or the other fluctuated like a barometer.

Once the nomads caught Kaisim Pasha at a heavy disadvantage. The navvies and engineers were busy at work as usual on the permanent way, with the military outpost thrown well out on all sides. Suddenly there was a savage, heart-rending yell, and the desert became alive with the swarthy, active and powerful, infuriated bandits. In an irresistible wave they swept down upon the railhead. The outposts stood their ground, but they were overwhelmed in the rush. The Field-Marshal hurriedly called one and all to arms. The navvies threw down their hammers, pick-axes, shovels, and other tools, grabbed their rifles, and supported the soldiers. But there was no stemming that savage, rushing horde. The tribesmen fanatically threw themselves upon the position, and to such advantage that the commander was compelled to retire, leaving 100 dead upon the field.

Construction was arrested completely for a time. The bandits, inspired with their initial success, hung about, and at the slightest attempt at a sally, concentrated and bore down, driving the soldiers back. The situation became so critical that Kaisim Pasha determined to teach the nomads a severe lesson once and for all. He hurriedly sent home for reinforcements, together with ten battalions of artillery, which were despatched post-haste to his assistance.

When his forces were strengthened sufficiently he issued forth, and in turn caught the nomads by surprise. The soldiers, who had been chafing under the reverse they had suffered and their prolonged inability to revenge their fallen comrades, seized the opportunity and carried home the attack with spirited energy. For a time the bandits stood their ground, offering a stubborn resistance. The artillery shelled them out of their entrenchments, and the modern machine-guns and magazine rifles so swept them down when they ventured into the open, that at last they broke their ranks and fled in disorder. The Turks pursued and scattered their enemy to the four winds. The Bedouin losses were tremendous, and their ranks were cut up so completely, and their organisation was so crushed, that no further concerted action was taken to dispute the advance of the line to Mecca. Occasionally raids were made upon stations and completed sections, but such attacks were found to be attributable to independent, irresponsible units. Comparative tranquillity prevailed until the last division connecting the sacred cities with the Red Sea was taken in hand, and then one day the tribesmen made another raid, wiping out the whole of the constructional forces.

When the line was commenced, H. Meissner Pasha, the enterprising German engineer selected to carry out the scheme, was given simply the two terminals of the line—Damascus and Mecca—roughly 1000 miles apart, and instructed to connect them by rail as best he could. It is to Meissner Pasha, therefore, that the full credit of carrying the line to success must be extended, for upon his shoulders fell the brunt of the work. He had to plot its path, had to be at the railhead to evolve a solution for a problem as it arose, and had to force his way through, over, or around obstacles as they confronted him. In this task he displayed considerable ingenuity and resource, while he appeared to be possessed of tireless energy. The handling of huge corps of men of varying nationalities—Turks, Montenegrins, Greeks, Cretans, Bedouins, and so on—was no simple matter in itself, but he possessed the happy faculty of infusing all who worked under him with his own enthusiasm and ambition to get the line completed in the shortest possible time. In addition to these duties of an essentially technical character, he had to attend to every want of his workmen. Every drop of water, every ounce of food, of stores, provisions, fuel and so forth had to be hauled over enormous distances, and in the depths of the desert the work of maintaining these supplies became stupendous. Owing to his splendid organisation, however, his most advanced outposts never once ran short of any of the necessaries of life.

The monumental features of Meissner Pasha’s constructional ingenuity, however, are illustrated in the remarkable series of tunnels, bridges, loops and windings by which the railway is carried through the Yarmuk valley in Palestine between the Jordan and Deraa, and the negotiation of the escarpment south of Ma’an, where the line, after climbing the plateau to a height of 3,700 feet above sea-level, drops suddenly into a yawning ravine.

Damascus was selected as the starting-point for the railway, and the gauge of the line extending northwards from this terminus was adopted. Consequently, when the various intermediate links in the railway chain of northern Asia Minor are connected up, it will be possible to run from Constantinople to the sacred cities without change of carriage. The route selected by the engineer is practically the shortest possible between the two opposite points, and runs roughly parallel with the famous centuries-old caravan route.