The road is picturesque and gives magnificent views of the Lebanon Mountains. The track winds its way up and down the hills, and the western side of the range is so steep that the cars are taken up on cogs after the same manner as on Pike’s Peak, Mount Washington, and the Rigi. There are twenty-five stations, mostly two-story buildings of stone. The passengers are the conglomerate mixture of humanity found in this part of the Orient. There are scores of Syrians in long coats and trousers, some wearing red fezzes, and others having turbans or handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads. There are Turkish officers in uniform, with swords at their sides, fez-capped boys in silk gowns, and other Moslems in turbans and gowns. There are Mohammedan women clad all in black and wearing black veils. There are pretty Greek girls with bare faces, brown-skinned women from the mountains, and Bedouins, who have ropes tied about the kerchiefs which half shroud their fierce features. There are also Persians, Druses, and Christians of all sorts and conditions. The trains go slowly in climbing the mountain. The average express makes less than sixteen miles an hour, while the mixed train takes twelve hours to make the ninety-one miles. For many years the European powers have been scheming for the right to build railroads in this part of the world. One of the biggest and most talked-of projects is a line to open up the rich valley of the Euphrates where Babylon and Nineveh once flourished. It has some of the best lands on the face of the globe, and it has been suggested that it was the site of the Garden of Eden. The British are especially interested in the project because of their irrigation plans for Mesopotamia headed by Sir William Willcocks, the engineer for the Aswan Dam, which has redeemed about seven million acres in Egypt. The Germans won out in the scramble for the concession to build the road to Bagdad. The line was divided into sections and the Germans pushed on the work rapidly. Another concession to part of this line was granted by the Sultan to a group of Americans, but their plans fell through. As to the resources to be developed by these new roads, they are beyond description enormous. They include rich deposits of coal, oil, and other minerals. Asia Minor is rich agriculturally. The plains of Mesopotamia will raise anything that can be grown in Egypt, and the new irrigation schemes will make them as productive as they were when Nebuchadnezzar was reigning at Babylon. In ancient times that country had a population of more than six million. It has not one fourth as many to-day. I am told that cotton will grow not only there but also throughout Asia Minor, and it may be that one of the chief competitors of our Southern plantations will eventually be found in this now almost waste but potentially rich part of the world.