While the majority of railways are constructed to meet the exigencies of commerce, and occasionally from considerations of military strategy, there is one striking instance of a line being built expressly for religious purposes. This is the Hedjaz railway, which stretches its sinuous, glittering arm of steel from Damascus for nearly 1000 miles southwards through the inhospitable deserts of Palestine and Arabia to Mecca and Medina, the sacred cities of the Moslem faith. The railway was built entirely by Mahommedans for Mahommedans, every penny required for the scheme being subscribed by the members of this vast sect.

Every member of the Faithful cherishes one ambition in life—to make the “Hadj,” or Sacred Journey to the cradle and shrine of the Prophet. A few years ago this was an undertaking from which all but those blinded by religious fervour shrank. The journey had to be completed afoot, by camel or caravan, according to the financial status of the pilgrim; but whatever method of transit was favoured, the self-same dangers prevailed, though obviously they were experienced most severely by those who were compelled to have recourse to Shanks’ Pony.

The route extended through practically uninhabited, sterile plains, upon which the sun beat down mercilessly, and the heat overhead was only equalled by that reflected from the glaring sand, which blistered the feet and imparted a fiery, maddening thirst. Food and water had to be carried by the pilgrim, because no sustenance could be obtained by the wayside. Even the welcome oases, with their refreshing, cooling rills and pools of water beneath the shade of the palms, are few and far between.

To the dangers of hunger, thirst and physical exhaustion there had to be included those from the attacks of the marauding Bedouins, who hung on the sides of the overland route, ever on the look-out to despoil the traveller. These brigands were most daring and ferocious in their depredations. They robbed the pilgrim of all he possessed, and if his poverty resulted in a meagre reward for their attack, they bludgeoned him mercilessly for not being better provided with this world’s goods, and left him bleeding and dying in the sun.

Every year hundreds of pilgrims paid the penalty for their zeal. They set out from Damascus on their mission of duty and faith never to return. So powerless was the Ottoman Government that these relentless nomads pursued their life of brigandage and preying on the pilgrims unchecked and without fear of punishment.

The Hedjaz railway was conceived in order to remove these perils and privations. When the Sultan published the details of his idea it was hailed with unalloyed enthusiasm by every Mahommedan throughout the world, and one and all contributed towards the furtherance of the scheme.

The fulfilment of this enterprise will always rank as a magnificent achievement in the romance of railway engineering; the methods by which the numerous obstacles were broken down as they arose contribute fascinating incidents to a thrilling story. When it is remembered that approximately 1000 miles of metals had to be laid through some of the most sterile and difficult country on the globe; that some 4000 bridges, viaducts and tunnels had to be built to span rushing rivers, yawning chasms, and to penetrate precipitous bluffs; that sudden drops had to be made from highlands to valleys, and equally steep ascents from depressions to plateaus, then a faint idea of the formidable character of the undertaking may be gathered.

For months the constructional engineers were buried in the midst of the biting, scorching and driving sand, quite isolated from the outside world, the clang of the tools being the only sound breaking a silence so intense that it could be felt. Occasionally the news filtered through that the implacable nomads roaming the sweltering plains had swooped down upon the camps and that a desperate hand-to-hand struggle had been waged. Minute details were not vouchsafed, for such incidents became so frequent as to become monotonous.

Yet the authorities scarcely anticipated that these marauders would wage such a relentless war against the advance of the railway as did eventually come to pass. Yet it was not surprising. The Bedouins realised that the completion of the railway would bring their life of pillage and murder to an end, and accordingly they challenged every foot of its advance. Sometimes they won, massacred the encampment, and destroyed the line for some distance; at others they lost and were routed right and left. The story of the Mahdi’s opposition to the British penetration of Egypt was repeated in Palestine and Arabia, only, if anything, with more determined fury. The soldiers worked with their arms beside them, and protected by a line of guards thrown out some distance around the railhead.

The military commandant was given a free hand to keep back the savage tribes in such a manner as he considered expedient, in order to permit the engineers to lay the metals as fast as possible, and without fear of being molested. When the work was inaugurated the Turkish Government appointed a strong man to the command of the protective troops. It was a responsible and dangerous position, for the authorities recognised from bitter experience the implacable fury of these tribesmen when fully roused. Field-Marshal Kaisim Pasha was appointed to the military directorship, and he proved the right man in the right place. His reputation and grim determination to subdue lawlessness were well known to the bandits, and the Government hoped that his appointment to the protection of the enterprise would strike terror into the hearts of the Bedouins. But far from it. It appeared to urge them to greater daring, and they hung on his flanks relentlessly, cutting off stragglers ruthlessly, and keeping him constantly on the alert. The Field-Marshal was kept in a state of perpetual anxiety, because he never knew upon which side or where he would be attacked next. Brushes were almost of daily occurrence, and the success of one side or the other fluctuated like a barometer.

Once the nomads caught Kaisim Pasha at a heavy disadvantage. The navvies and engineers were busy at work as usual on the permanent way, with the military outpost thrown well out on all sides. Suddenly there was a savage, heart-rending yell, and the desert became alive with the swarthy, active and powerful, infuriated bandits. In an irresistible wave they swept down upon the railhead. The outposts stood their ground, but they were overwhelmed in the rush. The Field-Marshal hurriedly called one and all to arms. The navvies threw down their hammers, pick-axes, shovels, and other tools, grabbed their rifles, and supported the soldiers. But there was no stemming that savage, rushing horde. The tribesmen fanatically threw themselves upon the position, and to such advantage that the commander was compelled to retire, leaving 100 dead upon the field.

Construction was arrested completely for a time. The bandits, inspired with their initial success, hung about, and at the slightest attempt at a sally, concentrated and bore down, driving the soldiers back. The situation became so critical that Kaisim Pasha determined to teach the nomads a severe lesson once and for all. He hurriedly sent home for reinforcements, together with ten battalions of artillery, which were despatched post-haste to his assistance.

When his forces were strengthened sufficiently he issued forth, and in turn caught the nomads by surprise. The soldiers, who had been chafing under the reverse they had suffered and their prolonged inability to revenge their fallen comrades, seized the opportunity and carried home the attack with spirited energy. For a time the bandits stood their ground, offering a stubborn resistance. The artillery shelled them out of their entrenchments, and the modern machine-guns and magazine rifles so swept them down when they ventured into the open, that at last they broke their ranks and fled in disorder. The Turks pursued and scattered their enemy to the four winds. The Bedouin losses were tremendous, and their ranks were cut up so completely, and their organisation was so crushed, that no further concerted action was taken to dispute the advance of the line to Mecca. Occasionally raids were made upon stations and completed sections, but such attacks were found to be attributable to independent, irresponsible units. Comparative tranquillity prevailed until the last division connecting the sacred cities with the Red Sea was taken in hand, and then one day the tribesmen made another raid, wiping out the whole of the constructional forces.

When the line was commenced, H. Meissner Pasha, the enterprising German engineer selected to carry out the scheme, was given simply the two terminals of the line—Damascus and Mecca—roughly 1000 miles apart, and instructed to connect them by rail as best he could. It is to Meissner Pasha, therefore, that the full credit of carrying the line to success must be extended, for upon his shoulders fell the brunt of the work. He had to plot its path, had to be at the railhead to evolve a solution for a problem as it arose, and had to force his way through, over, or around obstacles as they confronted him. In this task he displayed considerable ingenuity and resource, while he appeared to be possessed of tireless energy. The handling of huge corps of men of varying nationalities—Turks, Montenegrins, Greeks, Cretans, Bedouins, and so on—was no simple matter in itself, but he possessed the happy faculty of infusing all who worked under him with his own enthusiasm and ambition to get the line completed in the shortest possible time. In addition to these duties of an essentially technical character, he had to attend to every want of his workmen. Every drop of water, every ounce of food, of stores, provisions, fuel and so forth had to be hauled over enormous distances, and in the depths of the desert the work of maintaining these supplies became stupendous. Owing to his splendid organisation, however, his most advanced outposts never once ran short of any of the necessaries of life.

The monumental features of Meissner Pasha’s constructional ingenuity, however, are illustrated in the remarkable series of tunnels, bridges, loops and windings by which the railway is carried through the Yarmuk valley in Palestine between the Jordan and Deraa, and the negotiation of the escarpment south of Ma’an, where the line, after climbing the plateau to a height of 3,700 feet above sea-level, drops suddenly into a yawning ravine.

Damascus was selected as the starting-point for the railway, and the gauge of the line extending northwards from this terminus was adopted. Consequently, when the various intermediate links in the railway chain of northern Asia Minor are connected up, it will be possible to run from Constantinople to the sacred cities without change of carriage. The route selected by the engineer is practically the shortest possible between the two opposite points, and runs roughly parallel with the famous centuries-old caravan route.

It was felt, however, although Damascus should be the nominal northern terminus, that it would be more advantageous from all points of view to connect the railway with the Mediterranean Sea, so as to secure an independent outlet, and one more convenient for the handling of the constructional material than Beirut. The port selected for this purpose was Haifa, on the Bay of Acre. This sea branch runs inland broadly at right angles with the main line for a distance of about 100 miles, the junction being at Deraa. In building this section, however, many abstruse problems had to be unravelled, especially in the desolate valley of the Yarmuk. Here the line runs along narrow ledges cut in the mountain-side, plunges through massive shoulders, compasses precipitous bluffs, winds from one side of the gorge to the other, and crosses deep chasms by means of heavy masonry and metal bridges. In this stretch the River Jordan is crossed by a noble stone bridge of five arches—the only railway bridge across this sacred river—some distance below its flow from the Sea of Galilee.

The substantial character of this railway is a feature that most impresses the visitor. The bridges and viaducts are permanent structures wrought in stone or steel. Ample supplies of the former material were found in the mountain-sides. The steel structures are of massive and lofty proportions, and for the most part are supported upon heavy masonry piers carried deeply down into the beds of the rivers, so that the possibility of the foundations being undermined by the scouring action of the swiftly-rushing waters is eliminated.

In traversing Palestine, the railway follows practically a straight line from Deraa to Ma’an, some 250 miles to the south, and runs roughly parallel with the River Jordan, which is some miles to the west, while on the east stretches the vast Stoney Plain to the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Taken on the whole, these 250 miles were completed very rapidly, as there were no adverse physical difficulties to be overcome.

It was after leaving Ma’an to penetrate the wild and but little-known Hedjaz Peninsula that the engineer’s bitterest struggle for mastery over Nature began. It was as if the mythical Genii of the Lamp, resenting the unlocking of the door to their kingdom, combined in their efforts to baffle the railway engineer. Owing to the rugged character of the country the changes in level are frequent and heavy, varying from 200 or 300 feet below, to nearly 4000 feet above, the level of the Red Sea. There are few main lines in any part of the world that rise and fall so extensively and continuously.

Fortunately, in forcing the band of steel through this wild country, the engineer was able to proceed where he liked. It is simply a vast, silent waste of sand, with the rocks and mountains jutting their heads to the sky as the island eyries of the sea fowl rise from the sea. A deviation of a few hundred feet to the east or west of the air-line to avoid a saucer-like depression, with its heavy gradients, was quite immaterial. Yet even with these advantages it was not possible always to avoid sharp curves and counter-curves, heavy embankments, or the blasting of deep cuttings through large clumps of rocks.

The engineer carried his line south of Ma’an steadily upwards along the longitudinal ridge of a plateau, until at last he gained an altitude of 3,700 feet. Then the bank dropped sheer into a picturesque wild chasm known as Batn-el-Ghoul, or “the Devil’s Belly.”

The line reached the brink of the precipice. From there it had to be carried to the bed of the ravine which inclines to Tabuk, the next important point on the railway. But how was that gorge to be entered? how could the lower level be gained? A detour so as to avoid the escarpment was impossible, as the ridge stretched for miles on either hand.

Meissner Pasha hurried to the railhead. He surveyed every foot of ground in the vicinity, at one time clinging tenaciously to a crag; at another being swung over a cliff by a rope; then perched on a jagged pinnacle eagerly searching for some solution of his difficulty. He traversed the pilgrim road, which is but a mere trail dropping into the valley in a series of steep steps, time after time. The railway could not be carried parallel with the caravan road—that was perfectly obvious. The line of the overland route, which had for so long been a reliable guide, now deserted him. But the engineer refused to be daunted, and after prolonged reconnoitring he finally evolved a remarkable project, which proved a highly successful solution.

As he could not carry the line straight down into the valley, he devised a kind of spiral, in which the railway effects what may be best described as a “corkscrew” down the cliff face. From the brink of the ravine it makes a gentle fall, the line clinging to the precipices on a gallery cut for the purpose. After descending for some distance, it suddenly describes a sharp curve and winds back again. Then comes another loop and another redouble, this meandering being continued until the bed of the ravine is gained. It is an ingenious piece of work, and will rank always as one of the most prominent wonders of the railway, as well as a monument to the engineer’s ingenuity.

Its realisation, however, involved a tremendous struggle. The mountain-sides are scarred and carved by the elements into most fantastic shapes, with ugly, projecting spurs. These had to be blasted away, narrow ledges or shelves in the cliff-face widened or cut to carry the metallic path, deep rifts filled in or spanned, and isolated peaks, lifting their jagged nose into the sky like gaunt sentinels, avoided.

This ravine is a striking and curious specimen of the handiwork of Nature. There is not a vestige of vegetation, and all life is extinct. The masses of rock, turned into grotesque shapes by the lathe of Nature, stand out sharply and boldly defined against the sky-line, owing to the clearness of the atmosphere. They have a peculiar beauty, their weird charm being accentuated by the vivid contrasting colourings of the various geological strata standing out in distinct lines. Looking down from the brink of the gorge, in the glare of the noonday sun or the soft light of the sunrise or sunset, the floor of the valley resembles a huge Persian carpet, with its intense multitudinous hues.

There is a sudden change from this natural Oriental splendour of Nature after the ravine is left, for the railway passes over a dreary, sweltering plain until Tabuk, the half-way house between Damascus and Mecca, is gained. Then comes another steady climb through similar country until the summit level of the whole line is gained—3,750 feet above sea-level, which point also records the high-water mark of the difficulties that had to be overcome.

The 587th mile-post at Medina Saleh indicates the most southerly point to which the Infidel is permitted to travel over this railway. Even Meissner Pasha and his staff of engineers who were not in the ranks of the Faithful did not proceed farther towards Mecca. It was felt that Mahommedans, and Mahommedans alone, should have the glory of carrying the metals into the Sacred City. It was also feared that the presence of infidels in the vicinity of the scene of the Prophet’s nativity, despite their mission, possibly might inflame religious prejudices. Consequently, Meissner Pasha handed over the reins to his first lieutenant, Muktar Bey, the accomplished Turkish engineer who had assisted him loyally in the operations up to this point. Similarly, all but Mahommedan workmen were withdrawn from the railhead. The Ottoman engineer, fired with his former chief’s enthusiasm and energy, pushed forward at tip-top pressure, and the blast of the railway-whistle was heard among the mosques and palms of the Sacred City for the first time early in August, 1908.

The railway is up-to-date in every respect. The carriages are of the corridor type, and the pilgrim who has suffered the rigours of the wearisome overland journey can appreciate the luxury, ease and comfort of the Pullman car. The locomotives are also powerful creations of the engine-builder’s craft. Owing to the difficulties attending the supply of water and fuel along the line, the engines are equipped with abnormal facilities in this direction, the largest and most powerful types carrying 4000 gallons of water. The stations are substantial in character, being built of stone, so as to offer defiance to Arabs, who cannot stifle the desire to raid now and again. At Damascus extensive works, covering an area of 13,000 square feet, have been laid down for carrying out repairs to engines and rolling-stock, the workshops being fitted with the most up-to-date time- and labour-saving machinery.

When Medina was brought into touch with Damascus, and the widespread advantages presented by the railway became appreciated, it was decided to push the line to Mecca, 300 miles distant. Muktar Bey was detailed to control these operations, and, establishing a subsidiary base at Medina, he proceeded with the extension without delay. Unfortunately, on this final division the native tribes broke into hostility once more, and resumed their brigand tactics with renewed courage. On one occasion they completely overwhelmed the constructional camp, massacred all the workmen, and delayed construction until troops could be brought up to force their withdrawal to a safe distance.

Considering the magnitude of this scheme, its completion for about £3,000,000 ($15,000,000), or approximately £3000 ($15,000) per mile, is strikingly cheap. This low cost, however, is explicable from the fact that the Turkish military played a very important part in its construction, as many as 5000 soldiers being concentrated on the task at one time. The masonry work, steel bridges and general earthworks were undertaken by labour recruited from all parts, only one bridge and one heavy cutting being built by the troops, who for the most part were occupied in applying the finishing touches to the permanent way and platelaying.