Exportation from Turkey is limited to the coast borders and to the proximity of the few railways that exist. Railroads are confined to the European district and the eastern section of Asia Minor, with a short line reaching to Tarsus and Adana from Mersin and one from Joppa up to Jerusalem. New lines are under construction intending to connect Damascus with Mecca. Railroads cannot long be kept out of the interior of the country. There are but few made wagon roads, nearly all of which have been constructed since the Crimean war in 1854. One of the most noted of these few roads over which wheeled vehicles can pass extends from Samsoun upon the middle southern coast of the Black Sea, through Marsovan, Tokat, Amasia, Sivas, Malatia, Harpoot, and Diarbekr, ending at Mardin, a distance of nearly six hundred miles. Some of the bridges planned were never built, and many were washed away soon after construction. Another highway of a similar nature extends from Trebizond to Erzerum. Others have been recently built in Northern Syria. These roads never fail to be in poor repair. But the ordinary roads are worse, being in all parts of the empire mere bridle-paths, often worn deep in the solid rock by the hoof-beats of the caravans of fifty centuries. These conditions necessitate in the interior the transportation of all freight by horse or camel, thus discouraging commerce and trade, increasing the price of imports and making export practically impossible. This explains why a famine may prevail in one part of the country when at the same time, less than three hundred miles away, the crops are abundant. A good system of railroads would revolutionize everything. There is an abundance of foreign capital ready to construct such roads. Some fifteen years ago the plan was practically consummated to build a railroad from Samsoun through Asia Minor down across northern Mesopotamia to Bagdad. At the last moment the plan was thwarted by the sultan himself. In conversation upon this matter with an intelligent Mohammedan official who had been educated in England and France, the writer asked him if he did not understand that such a road would bring much wealth into the country, and at the same time develop far more wealth in the country itself. He was asked if he had studied the railroads of America and Europe and observed the great value they were in every way in those countries. His reply was characteristic. It was in substance, “I know well that all that you say of the value of railroads to a country is true. You have not overstated it. At the same time I know, and so does my master, the sultan, that every dollar of foreign capital that comes into this country under concessions as an investment, curtails by so much the authority of the sultan in his own domains. Such capital always brings with it foreign protection. If his imperial majesty should change his mind, as he has full right to do at any time, in regard to any of these concessions, he is at