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Haifa, June 13.—When Thackeray foretold that the day would come when the scream of the locomotive would awake the echoes in the Holy Land, and the voice of the conductor be heard shouting, “Ease her, stop her! Any passengers for Joppa?” he probably did so very much in the spirit in which Macaulay prophesied the New-Zealander sitting on the ruins of London Bridge, as an event in the dim future, and as a part of some distant impending social revolution; but the realization of the prediction is becoming imminent. The preliminary survey has just been completed as far as the Jordan, of the Hamidié, or Acre and Damascus Railway, which bids fair to be the first Palestine railway.

It is called the Hamidié line because it is named after his present majesty the Sultan Abdul Hamid, and probably one reason why the firman has been granted so easily lies in the fact that it passes through a great extent of property which he has recently acquired to the east of the plain of Esdraelon. The concession is held by ten or twelve gentlemen, some of whom are Moslems and some Christians, but all are Ottoman subjects resident in Syria. Among the most influential are the Messrs. Sursock, bankers, who own the greater part of the plain of Esdraelon, and who have therefore a large interest in the success of the line. From which it will appear that this is no speculation of Western promoters or financiers, but a real, bona-fide enterprise, and one which is likely to become a large source of profit to the holders of the concession and to the shareholders, for it will tap one of the richest grain-producing districts in the East.

I have myself ridden over the line for the first twenty miles, and have just seen the surveying party, who have returned well satisfied with the facilities which it offers from an engineering point of view. Starting from Acre, it will follow the curve of the bay for ten miles in a southerly direction at a distance of about two miles from the beach. Crossing the Kishon by a sixty-foot bridge, it will turn east at the junction of a short branch line, two miles long, at Haifa. Hugging the foot of the Carmel range, so as to avoid the Kishon marshes, it will pass through the gorge which separates that mountain from the lower ranges of the Galilee hills, and debouch into the plain of Esdraelon. This plain it will traverse in its entire length. The station for Nazareth will be distant about twelve miles from that town; there may, however, be a short branch to the foot of the hills.

So far there has only been a rise from the sea-level in twenty miles of two hundred and ten feet, so that the grade is imperceptible. It now crosses the watershed, and commences to descend across the plain of Jezreel to the valley of the Jordan. Here the Wady Jalud offers an easy incline as far as Beisan, the ancient Bethshean, and every mile of the country it has traversed so far is private property, and fairly cultivated. At Beisan it enters upon a region which has, partly owing to malaria and partly to its insecurity, been abandoned to the Arabs, but it is the tract of all others which the passage of a railway is likely to transfigure, for the abundance of the water, which is now allowed to stagnate in marshes, and which causes its unhealthiness, is destined to attract attention to its great fertility and natural advantages, which would, with proper drainage, render it the most profitable region in Palestine. Owing to the elevation of the springs, which send their copious streams across the site of Beisan, the rich plain which descends to the Jordan, five hundred feet below, can be abundantly irrigated. “In fact,” says Dr. Thomson, describing this place in his “Land and the Book,” “few spots on earth, and none in this country, possess greater agricultural and manufacturing advantages than this valley, and yet it is utterly desolate.”

It needs only a more satisfactory administration on the part of the government, and the connection of this district with the sea by rail, to make Beisan an important commercial and manufacturing centre. All kinds of machinery might be driven at small expense by its abounding brooks, and then the lovely valley of Jezreel above it, irrigated by the Jalud, and the Ghor Beisan below, watered in every part by many fertilizing streams, are capable of sustaining a little nation in and of themselves. There is a little bit of engineering required to carry the line down to the valley of the Jordan, here eight hundred feet below the level of the sea, which it then follows north as far as the Djisr el-Medjamieh. Near this ancient Roman bridge of three arches, which is used to this day by the caravans of camels which bring the produce of the Hauran to the coast, the new railway bridge will cross the Jordan, probably the only one in the world which will have for its neighbour an actual bridge in use which was built by the Romans, thus, in this now semi-barbarous country, bringing into close contact an ancient and a modern civilization. After crossing the Jordan, the line will still follow the banks of that river to its junction with the Yarmuk, which it will also cross, and then traverse a fertile plain of rich alluvium, about five miles long by four wide, to the base of the ridge which overlooks the eastern margin of the Sea of Tiberias.

This is the extent to which the survey has been completed. It is not decided whether to rise from the valley by the shoulder of the ridge which overlooks the Yarmuk, or to follow the east shore of the Lake of Tiberias to the Wady Semakh, which offers great advantages for a grade by which to ascend nearly three thousand feet in about fifteen miles. This is the toughest bit of engineering on the line, and is in close proximity to the steep place down which the swine possessed by devils are said to have rushed into the sea. Once on the plateau it will traverse the magnificent pasture-lands of Jaulan, across which I rode four years ago in the spring, when the numerous streams by which it was watered were flowing copiously, and the tall, waving grass reached nearly up to my horse's belly.

This rich tract was the one on which it is probable that Job pastured his flocks and herds—at least, all the local tradition points to this. It was well populated until comparatively recent times, but the sedentary inhabitants, the ruins of whose villages dot the country, were driven out by the Arabs, who now pasture vast herds of cattle upon it, and droves of horses which are fattened here after their journey from Mesopotamia previous to being exported to Egypt. The course of the line across this region has not been definitely fixed, but it will probably take as southern a direction as possible, so as to tap the grain-growing country of the Hauran. There may possibly be a short branch to Mezrib, which is the principal grain emporium, and one of the most important halting-places on the great pilgrimage road from Damascus to Mecca. It is calculated that the transport of grain alone from this region to the coast will suffice to pay a large dividend upon the capital required for the construction of the road, which will be about one hundred and thirty miles in length. I do not remember the number of tons annually conveyed on the backs of camels to Acre and Haifa, but I have seen thousands of these ungainly animals collected at the gates of both those towns during the season, and the amount must be something enormous. This does not include the whole of the Damascus trade, which now finds its way by the French carriage road across the Lebanon to Beyrout, and which will all be diverted to the railway, or the produce of the rich country it traverses between the sea-coast and the Jordan.

The grantees have also secured the right to put steam-tugs upon the Lake of Tiberias, and under the influence of this new means of transportation the desolate shores will undergo transformation. The great plain of Genesareth, across which I rode a month ago, is now a waste of the most luxuriant wild vegetation, watered by three fine streams, besides being well supplied with springs. It was celebrated of old for the amount and variety of its produce, and I have no doubt is again destined to be so. The plains in which Bethsaida and Capernaum stood formerly are all covered with heavy vegetation which conceals the extensive ruins of the cities which once adorned them; and there is a fine back country within easy reach of the lake which will send its produce to it as soon as means of transportation are provided. At present there are only half a dozen sailing-boats on the lake, rather a contrast from the time when Josephus collected no fewer than two hundred and thirty war-ships with which to attack Tiberius in the war against the Romans; and the fish with which it abounded in the days of the miraculous draught are more miraculously numerous than ever, for fishing as an industry has almost ceased to exist, and the finny tribe are left undisturbed. There are some celebrated sulphur baths also on the shores of the lake and within two miles of the town, which are visited annually by thousands of patients. I was there during the bathing season, and found them camped in tents on the margin of the lake, or sweltering in the fetid atmosphere of the one large bathing-room, in which a crowd of naked and more or less cutaneous patients were disporting themselves.

The surveying party tell me that they received the greatest kindness and hospitality from the Arabs in the Jordan valley, who were of a sedentary tribe, and cultivated the land, and who looked forward with pleasure to the advent of a railway, and to the chances of employment which it afforded them. Indeed, both natives and foreigners are not a little excited at the prospect which is now being opened to them, and which promises to be the dawn of a new era of prosperity for the country.

Note.—Since the above was written, the concession has lapsed in consequence of difficulties which arose at the last moment in the formation of the company for carrying out the enterprise; but it is again in process of renewal, and I have little doubt but that it will be ultimately accomplished.