'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎28r] (55/72)

37
fellows, their masters, seldom go a tax-gathering for Government among the Arabs, without
finding a mare, or at any rate a colt or pony, for themselves; and so they can afford to
sell cheap. In the way of sport, between Der and Rumadi, beyond partridge shooting,
there is little attraction. Out of clumps of awsaj (osier) and tamarisk not unlike the best
of English fox-covers, often sallied grisly boars, too formidable to be attacked on bad ground,
or with half knocked up horses.
No one can pass down the Euphrates valley without often thinking of the idea exer-
R ail way question. cising both the political and commercial worlds that a
railway ought to be carried through it from the Mediter
ranean to the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. . As far as mere physical feature goes, there is nothing to
suggest that the sum of ^10,000,000 sterling, which is what the House of Commons Com
mittee of 1872 calculated as the probable cost of construction, would not prove enough.
But two things seem certain: Firstly, so long as the Tigris and Euphrates valleys remain
under their present administrative and political conditions, such a railway would be
dependent for its receipts mainly on its ocean termini ; and, secondly, with that the case
it could never pay. In some countries perhaps a railway may attract, if not even create, a
population; but one would need to be very sanguine to look for such results in the case of
Asiatic Turkey at the present time. Not only are there countries in which other peoples'
money cannot be invested without much risk of disappearing, but there are countries also
on which the introduction of foreign capital is apt to have anything but a good effect. The
future of England's ancient ally on the Bosphorus no one can predict. Not only have we
of all European powers least to gain and most to lose by her decadence ; but our own
experiences in many lands may well render us sympathetic with reference to the political
work she is engaged in over so large a part of Asia. That she is meeting with some
success one would need to be either very ungenerous, or very ignorant of facts to dispute.
The magnitude of the difficulties she has to contend with could hardly be overstated.
Possibly some of the few energetic, honest, and patriotic administrators she has recently
had, such as Midhat Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , have done her as much harm through their zeal for putting new
wine into old bottles as the drones, fanatics, and plunderers also figuring among her
statesmen and proconsuls have done. But however that may be, the motto of " Yawdsh,"
" Yawdsh," or u gently," "gently," which is always on her lips is so eminently appropriate
to her condition, that it almost merits being inscribed on her imperial flag. If time
be given her, who can say that, present symptoms and appearances notwithstanding, she
may not one day be able to make railways, dig canals, and embank rivers, for herself
all over her Asiatic provinces. But for the present perhaps it is best for busy pushing
Europe to consider this as a part of the world which is lying fallow till its turn come round
again.
The Tigris and Euphrates, the former some eleven hundred and fifty, and the latter
River Euphrates some eighteen hundred miles in length, main windings
inclusive, are the only streams of the first order in all the
regions which they water. They alone, both before and after their confluence at Gurna,
bear the dignified appellation of " Shatt," or river. As to this, Arab, nomenclature is
particular. A river is never called a stream; or a stream, a river. The former, and the
former only, is a shatt; the latter, if of goodly size, being termed a nahr ; if but a brook,
jadwal; and if even smaller, sdkiya. The general features of Turkish Arabia A term used by the British officials to describe the territory roughly corresponding to, but not coextensive with, modern-day Iraq under the control of the Ottoman Empire. can no
more be understood than its physical ones, without a clear idea of the part which its two
great historical rivers have played, not less in creating it, or at any rate the lower portion
of it, as the Ganges and its affluents have created Lower Bengal, than in fertilising it,
and determining at once the distribution, number, and character of its inhabitants. The
modern word Euphrates is a Grecianised form of the very ancient name Furdt which,
though stri"tly belonging to one only of its two initial arms or branches, is now the
common local designation of the river as a whole. Time was when the idea of navigat
ing the Euphrates was almost as much thought of in England as that of running a railway
alongside of it is now. In 1835, the British Government, under royal auspices, deputed
Colonel Chesney, R.A., to Syria, with instructions to transport two steamers from the
Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and, after putting them together, descend the river
to the sea. One vessel (Tigris) sank in a squall not far from Ana, but the other reached
the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. .* In 1841, the East India Company, rightly judging descent to be but
* Of this expedition the principal result now remaining is Colonel Chesney's elaborate work, with charts and
illustrations (1850), forming a perfect mine of geographical and historical information regarding some of the most
interesting portions of the ancient world.