EARLY RAILWAY SCHEMES. 85 



bilities and probabilities, as affecting this country, of 

 any future railway to the Persian Gulf alone deter- 

 mined the direction of my journey, I have no hesita- 

 tion in setting before my readers the situation in 

 connection with the so-called " Baghdad railway," as 

 I understand it at the present time. 



And when considering the prospects of a railway 

 which is to connect Constantinople with the Persian 

 Gulf, it is impossible to help recalling the long story 

 of brilliant inception which distinguishes the part 

 played by Great Britain at intervals during a period 

 of upwards of sixty years, in an endeavour to in- 

 augurate a system of direct land communication be- 

 tween Europe and the seas of Southern Asia, or to 

 refrain from indulging in a lament at the remorseless 

 regularity with which the lifelong efforts of more 

 than one patriotic Englishman were destined to 

 flicker out in a pitiable succession of unrewarded and 

 abortive endeavour. The attempts made during the 

 first half of the nineteenth century to navigate the 

 Euphrates, a relic of which may still be seen in the 

 garden of the British Consulate at Aleppo, in the shape 

 of the small guns with which the steamers were to 

 have been fitted, followed during the early years of 

 the latter half by the railway schemes inseparably con- 

 nected with the names of Chesney and Andrew ; the 

 reawakening of public interest a few years later in 

 a short road to the East, which led to the drawing 

 up of a report by a select committee, and again early 

 in the last quarter of the waning century, as indicated 

 by the formation of the " Euphrates Valley Railway 

 Association," pass successively across the scene, to 

 terminate in an attempt by a group, chiefly English, 

 to obtain a concession, up to the very time that the 

 telegram was despatched to the Emperor William 



