From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

Now as then the roadways follow the lines of least resistance. But, owing to the peculiar topographical conditions of many parts of the Near East, the traveler’s choice of direction is necessarily limited. In the broad and inhospitable desert his course will necessarily depend on the location of the few existing springs and wells and wadis, while in the mountainous regions it will, in great measure, be governed by a few and widely-separated passes. In many cases, too, where broad and deep rivers are to be crossed, the direction taken, especially during the season of rains and floods, will vary with the condition of often-changing and frequently treacherous fords.

The celebrated Royal Road, of which Herodotus gives so graphic an account, is a case in point. The student of ancient history is surprised when he first observes its circuitous course between the one-time capital of Persia and the famous emporium of Crœsus, but the reason of it becomes evident when he learns something of the character of the country through which it passed. He then discovers that the prehistoric travelers—long centuries before the days of Cyrus and Darius and Xerxes—who first selected this long and roundabout route between the plains of Mesopotamia and the shore of the Ægean—a route which took them over high mountains and pitiless deserts and dangerous morasses—did simply what a modern railroad engineer would do under similar circumstances—chose for their venturesome journey the line of least resistance.[263]

It must, however, here be observed that the word “road,” as used in the Orient, rarely has the same meaning which we attach to the term. There a road is rarely anything more than the line of route marked by the footprints of travelers or beasts of burden. Even the Royal Highway between Susa and Sardis was nothing more than this. It was only when the Romans—the great road builders of antiquity—became masters of western Asia that its leading cities were connected by roads in our conception of the word. Now, however, only traces of these splendid highways constructed by the Cæsars exist, and roads available for wheeled vehicles are still almost as rare in most parts of the Near East as they were in the time of Tigranes or Tiglath-Pileser.

But, although the great majority of eastern roads have never felt a spade or pick-ax, and are nothing more than evanescent footprints in spongy swamp or shifting sand, nevertheless there hangs over most of them an air of legend and romance and historic association which stimulates the mind of the traveler in a preëminent degree and affords as much food for thought as he can find in any of the great highways of the more civilized regions of the modern world.

We had wished to go from Tarsus to Antakia, formerly the capital of Syria, which in the days of its greatest splendor was known as “Antioch the Beautiful,” “The Crown of the East,” “The Metropolis and Eye of Christendom.” Here the followers of Christ were first called Christians and here for a long time was one of the most influential seats of the Christian Church. For generations it ranked next to Rome and Alexandria as the most important emporium in the great empire of the Cæsars. During a long period it was also the western terminus of the great trade route over which was borne

The wealth of Ormus and of Ind

for distribution among the marts of Greece and Rome. But lack of time prevented us from visiting the scattered remains of this once famous city and we perforce boarded a train on the Bagdad Railway and started for Aleppo, whose history is in some respects scarcely less eventful than that of the erstwhile capital of the Seleucids.

We left the Cilician Plain by way of the Bagdad Railroad, which took us over several well-constructed steel bridges and through a number of tunnels in the Amanus Range. One of these tunnels, said to be the longest in Turkey, is more than three miles in length. The roadbed, bridges, tunnels, stations, and rolling stock of this noted line compare favorably with those of the best railways in Europe and show, better than words, what great trade development in the Near East its projectors had in contemplation when they put their millions in the Bagdad Railroad. Will they ever receive any return for their stupendous investment? And, if so, when? Echo asks “When”?

The scenery along the railroad in the Amanus Range and in the plain on the way to Aleppo is much like that of the Taurus Mountains and of Cilicia Campestris, where one can truly say with the poet Bryant

There is a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,