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THE DAWN OF THE BAGHDAD RAILWAY

I

There is something very weird and uncanny in the terminus of a railway in the middle of a wild and desolate country such as this. The Monster runs his iron fangs into the heart of its desolation and shoots you into it like a ball out of a cannon's mouth. Roaring and hissing and sending out jets of flame, he comes racing through the darkness to a certain definite spot; here he discharges you in the blackness of night and subsides. Next morning when you awake he is gone, and you are left to shift for yourself as best you can. But there is a certain human friendliness about this Monster while you are travelling with him. He seems to draw all the signs of life out of an apparently dead country and collect them at the stations for you to see. Great warehouses filled with sacks of corn testify to the productiveness of a country which, judging it from the train window after harvest time, one would dismiss as mere barren soil; an occasional MacCormick's "Daisy" reaper awaiting delivery on a side platform, native carts hanging about, and truck-loads of empty sacks tell the same tale. Groups of peasants, idly gossiping, gathered together by the whistle which heralds the Monster's approach, belie the impression of an uninhabited land; for Turkish villages are carefully designed so as not to attract attention. When one's eye gets more familiar with the seemingly uniform colour of the landscape, varied only by light and shade, one becomes aware of the low, flat-topped, mud-brick houses, which, even at close quarters, often seem but part of the natural rock.

Even the unchanging East is powerless once the Monster's fangs have taken hold; he alone of all influences comes to stay and leave his mark.

Slowly, perhaps, but very surely, he undermines with irresistible persistence the customs and habits which from time immemorial have held their own against the religious, educational, or military forces of stronger nations.

This particular spot has long been the battlefield of the East and the West; now one, now the other, has had temporary ascendance; in the long run the East has always conquered.

But already we can see what a power the East has to reckon with in the railway. For one thing it attacks the Eastern in one of his vital points—his conception of Time. Time waited for him when he had but camels to load; but the railway will not wait for him; the Monster screeches and is off. Sunrise or two hours after sunrise is not one and the same thing to him. Relentless as day and night he comes and goes, and there is no cheating him as the Eastern cheats Time.

But the railway is cheating the East out of its time-worn customs and ideas, and there is a certain sadness in the evidences of transition. All down the line picturesque native costumes are being replaced by ugly European clothes. The men wear terrible fancy trouserings from Manchester; the women spend more money on dress—and unfortunately it is European dress—and less on the old-fashioned wedding feasts. The turnover of the shops in the larger towns has increased fourfold in the last ten years. The bazaars are now a medley of stalls exhibiting native manufactures side by side with cheap trinkets from England and loud flannelettes from Italy. The price of wheat has doubled; and with that of wheat the prices of other exports have also risen. Opium, wool, mohair, hides, and salt are amongst the products of these great plains.

Two short days' ride from Nicæa had brought us to Mekidje, a station on the Anatolian Railway half-way between Haida Pasha and Eskishehr. The single line went as far as Konia, and one train ran each way every day. It stopped for the right at Eskishehr, continuing the journey next morning.

We arrived at the station some hours before the train was due, and sat in the stationmaster's strip of garden, for there did not seem anything else to do. We said goodbye to the Zaptiehs and to the muleteers who were returning to Brusa, and watched them slowly disappear down the road we had come. Then we heard the low, familiar tinkle of camel bells and a score or more of laden animals paced slowly into the open ground round the station. They have a more discreet and tuneful way of announcing their arrival than the Monster, and when they appear on the scene they do so in a more dignified, calmer manner. Having arrived also, they do not look as if they were off again the next minute; they look as if they had come to stay for ever, and they give you time to think. One by one, in answer to a word of command, they knelt down in the dust, and the great baskets holding the goods were unfastened and rolled about on the ground. Their owners seemed too slack to do any more. They let them lie there while they looked at the sun. The Monster is slowly replacing these carriers of the East; but their day is not yet done by a long way, for they must feed him from the interior. His life is still dependent on the life of those he is working to destroy.

At last we heard his distant shriek. Down upon us he came, dashing up all in a minute, in such a splutter and such a hurry, waking us all up. Officials rushed up and down the platform, and swore at the natives who were loading our baggage. Everybody talked at once to everybody else, and the Monster hissed impatiently, noisy even when he was standing still.

There were not many passengers; in a first-class carriage a Pasha travelled in solitary state; all his harem were delegated to a second-class carriage, where the blinds were pulled down. In the third-class were a few natives, who leaned out of the windows and gossiped with the camel owners, idle witnesses of the busy scene.

But the Monster is getting impatient; he hisses furiously and finally gives a warning shriek. Then off he goes, and we take a last look at the kneeling camels, munching away as unconcernedly as if their destroyer had never invaded their peaceful country.

Mekidje is practically at sea-level; Eskishehr is a tableland two thousand feet high; we had therefore a steady rise on the whole journey up the valley formed by the Kara Su, a river which has its source in the neighbourhood of Eskishehr. On each side rounded hills shut out the horizon, save where here and there a tributary valley would reveal, through steep-sided gorges, a distant view of purple ridges with snow-clad tops.

It was night when we arrived at Eskishehr, and we groped our way to the Grand Hôtel d'Anatolie, kept by Greeks. It was at this hotel that we first met Hassan, who was destined to play such a large part in our future travels. He was an Albanian Turk, and had been introduced to us by our friends in Constantinople, whom he accompanied on their shooting expeditions in this district. They had written to ask him to look after us during our brief stay at Eskishehr.

Ibrahim brought him into our room, and there he stood silently, after salaaming us in the usual way.

Ibrahim was a tall man, but Hassan towered above him. He wore a huge sheepskin coat, which added to his massive, impressive look.

X looked up words in her Turkish book.

"They told us you would look after us here?" she said.

"As my eyes," he answered very quietly and simply. And thus began one of those friendships on which neither time nor distance can leave its mark.

Two days later X asked him whether he would accompany us on the next stage of our journey, across the Anatolian Plateau and the Taurus Mountains to Mersina.

"Will you come with us and guard us well?" she said. He dropped on one knee and kissed her hand.

"On my head be it," he said.

Eskishehr, before the days of the railway, was a purely Turkish town; it displayed the usual chaos of mud-brick and wooden houses, with their lower windows carefully latticed over for the concealment of the women; of narrow, winding bazaars, here a display of brightly coloured clothes and rugs, there a noisy street of smithies and carpenters' shops; and rising above it all the minarets of half a dozen mosques.

But the railway's mark is on it to-day. The population has been increased by some five thousand Tartars and Armenians, whose houses, planted together near the line, have a neat, modern, shoddy look, contrasting with the picturesque squalor of the ancient Turkish town.

The railway is slowly attacking the stronghold of the Turkish peasant, extending his operations on the wasted stretches of cultivable land, and slowly opening out dim vistas of prosperity athwart his present apathy. In the same way the railway is slowly affecting the town merchant. But one shudders here at the effect of prosperity unaccompanied by civilising influences. For in the rich merchant of the town you have the Turk at his worst. The simple, hospitable Turkish peasant is made of good stuff; the Turkish soldier of rank and file, if his fanatical tendencies are not encouraged, is equally good; the official Turk is corrupt, but only because the particular method of administering his country's laws obliges him to be so; the educated Turk of Constantinople is rapidly becoming a civilised being. But the rich middle-class Turk of towns has nothing to be said for him. The Christians have taught him to drink, and he is rich enough to keep a large harem. We had an introduction to one such person in Eskishehr. The polished Turkish phraseology of welcome could not conceal the coarseness and vulgarity of his mind, and we were glad to escape to the sacred inner chambers, where a very young and pretty woman sat in lonely state, the latest addition to his harem. There she sat, draped in the softest silks of gorgeous colourings, surrounded with all the evidences of luxury and comfort, as sulky as a little bear.