Road from Beyrout to Damascus
This is a scene taken from the point between Damascus and the falls we have just left. We are looking toward a ridge of Anti-Lebanon that slopes down toward the city. The Beyrout road, which connects Damascus with the sea, is one of the finest bits of road-making in the world. It was built by a French company about forty years ago. It is macadamized and is kept in as good repair as any street in any American city. The road is seventy miles long, passing over the Lebanon Mountains, and the “diligence” goes from Damascus over this road to Beyrout every day. The trip is made in thirteen hours. The horses are changed thirteen times. In addition to the “diligence” there passes to and from Damascus every day a long train of covered wagons—a great freight train between Europe and Persia, Bagdad and Palmyra. The French Government had a contract with the Sultan of Turkey under which they controlled this road, but the contract expires within the next two years, and the same company is now building a railway from Beyrout to Baalbec and Damascus and over into the Hauran. By the time the grant of the Turkish Government to the French company expires the same company will have a railway under a new grant from the Sultan. Thousands of men were at work last May building bridges and cutting the railway roadbed through the mountains. One of the editors of this book rode from Damascus to Beyrout in 1863 on the first stage that made the trip in a single day.
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