Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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What is known as the Anatolian Railway begins at Haidar-Pasha, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, opposite Constantinople, and runs eastward, following a sort of zigzag course, to the city of Angora, in Asia Minor. A branch runs down to Murad, where it connects with a line from Smyrna, and a little farther south, at Alshehr, it connects with a line from Aidin. Both Smyrna and Aidin are on the Ægean Sea and are very important ports.

The railways I have described have been in operation for several years. They owe their existence to British enterprise and were built with British capital, but have passed into the control of the International Syndicate, which holds the concession for the Bagdad Railway, and are to be a part of that system. In other words, the present Anatolian Railway is to be extended through Asia Minor and Mesopotamia via Bagdad to the Persian Gulf, and there connect with a projected line across Persia and Afghanistan to join the railway system of India at Quetta or some other convenient place. This will connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas with the Persian Gulf, and, in the growing railway transportation system of Asia, will correspond to the Sunset line of the Southern Pacific in the United States, in the same way as the Great Siberian road corresponds to the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, and the Central Asia Railway to the Union and Central Pacific route. Already 640 kilometres, or about four hundred and fifty miles, have been completed and about one thousand miles remain to be built.