90 THE BAGHDAD BAILIVAY. 



by no means insurmountable obstacle to the engineer. 

 The main artery leading south from the important com- 

 mercial centre of Kaisariyeh will be cut at Porsuk, and 

 the long strings of camels — I passed something like 

 a thousand in the course of a single day returning 

 lightly laden from the coast — which now bear burdens 

 of hides and grain, passing with silent ghostly tread 

 over the highway of conquering armies of the past, 

 must ere long give place to the iron horse. As far 

 as the bridge over the Tchakid Su at Ak Keupri it will 

 follow the existing road, and in so doing will encounter 

 no engineering difficulty greater than that afforded by 

 a gradient of, at the outside, 1 in 80 ; ^ but from here 

 on the caravan road must be left, and the one serious 

 difficulty of the whole line is soon afterwards en- 

 countered in a vast mountain wall nearly 2000 feet in 

 height, with hardly any room for curves in surmount- 

 ing it, which rises between the valley of the Tchakid 

 Su and the Cilician plain.^ I was informed by an 

 engineer who had accompanied the Commission of 1899 

 that as many as seventy tunnels would be required in 

 surmounting this obstacle, but the preliminary survey 

 was admittedly a rough one, and a further detailed 

 survey will have to be undertaken before this section 

 of the line is constructed. 



Arrived at the foot of the mountains, it is natural to 

 inquire why, when there is already a railway to the sea, 

 another line — the temporary branch I have already 

 spoken of — should be required, tapping the identical 



1 Professor Ramsay writes as follows : " Once placed at the northern 

 end of the pass, the line has a gentle descent down a continuous easy 

 glen — interrupted only once by a ridge of no serious consequence — for 

 about 35 miles. In those 35 miles the descent is only about 2200 feet, 

 giving, without any zigzags, a gradient of 1 in 80, roughly speaking." — 

 Jouinal of the Royal Geographical Society for October 1 903. 



" The Tchakid Su escapes through an undergi'ound channel. 



