The Eiiphratcs Valley Railway. 279 



winter months, no local traffic could be counted on. 

 The villagers of the Euphrates are too poor to afford 

 the lowest price at which railway fares could be 

 offered, while tlieir existing caravan trade with 

 camels is cheap, and time is of no value. The 

 population of the river is extremely scanty. If 

 there are fifty thousand inhabitants between Bagdad 

 and Aleppo, it is more than I should suppose exists, 

 and of these, four- fifths at least must belong to the 

 lower villages south of Ana. Between Ana and 

 Aleppo, three hundred miles, there is but one village 

 of any importance, and probably not ten thousand 

 inhabitants, all counted. 



A more possible railway route, commercially speak- 

 ing, lies along the track of the old caravan road by 

 Orfa and Mosul, for this passes through a cultivated 

 district, and would serve a series of large towns. I 

 cannot, however, conceive that even this could be a 

 financial success. For many years to come the ex- 

 istence of a railway would be powerless to repeople 

 Assyria ; and, with such large tracts of excellent 

 soil lying uncultivated and close at hand between 

 Aleppo and the sea, immigrants would hardly choose 

 the tamarisk jungles of the Euphrates and Tigris as 

 the scene of a new colony. It must be recollected 

 that the area of alluvial land in either valley is 

 very small. A principal feature of all these schemes 

 seems to be the restoration of fertility to the Baby- 

 lonian plain south of Bagdad. This, rich as the 

 plain formerly was, could not now be effected with- 



