'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎637] (706/714)

RAILWAYS
637
further advantage, if ever constructed and brought into com
munication with Europe, of depositing the British soldier, not
merely at Kurrachi, but on the Afghan frontier itself, and at the
probable theatre of war.
Should such a line ever be realised, and should it be connected
with the Mediterranean, and thereby with Europe, the junction
is more likely to be effected by correspondence with rail-
AsicX Minor # ^ l
Trunk roads already in existence in Asia Minor, than by the
railway construction of a separate debouchure and port in the
Syrian recess of the Levant A geographical area corresponding to the region around the eastern Mediterranean Sea. . There are, at the present moment,
three separate railway systems in Asia Minor. The first conducts
from Scutari, opposite Constantinople, to Ismidt, fifty-six miles,
and is now being continued to Angora in the heart of Asia Minor.
The second runs from Smyrna to Dinair, 230 miles in the interior.
The third is a short line of forty miles in length, connecting the
port of Mersina, near Tarsus in Cilicia, with Adana. The en
gineering difficulties of railroads in so mountainous a country as
Asia Minor are great, the impediments arising from the vices of
Ottoman administration are many, and the commercial returns are,
in any case, for some time likely to be small. But it is conceivable
that in the future the first two of these lines may be joined, or
that the first of them may be protracted to a point at which it
would ultimately connect with the Trans-Persian line which I have
sketched. In such a case, the long-talked-of overland route to
India might be supplied by the Oriental Express running from
Calais to Constantinople, in conjunction with the Asia Minor rail
ways, continuing from the other side of the Bosphorus. In the
far-off future a supplementary connection with the Mediterranean
might be supplied by a Syrian line. But the whole of these pro
jects appertain to a distance so remote that I shall not live to see
them realised, if realisation ever comes, and that prophecy approxi
mates with suspicious closeness to conjecture.
I have heard suggested another alternative overland route to
India, in the shape of a railroad from Port Said, at the mouth of
Egy t o Suez Canal, across the heart of Arabia, to some point
Arabian on the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. . Such a scheme appears to me to
suffer from all the disadvantages of the Euphrates Valley
route in an exaggerated degree, without any of the redeeming
compensations. The children of Israel wandered for forty years
in a section of the intervening wilderness; but I should be sorry