ABSTRACT
In the ftrst of these plans, the Euphrates river-rather than the actual desert-was visualized as the connecting link. "The Steam Committee of the House of Commons" recommended, and Parliament subsequently voted, a grant of £20,000 for an experiment to be made for steamboat communication with India by Syria and the Euphrates. A supplementary £10,000 was later subscribed: half by Parliament, and half by the East India Company. Preliminary investigations by Colonel Chesney in Asiatic Turkey, Syria, Arabia and Iran paved the way for such parliamentary action; the fact that the Euphrates Route was estimated to be 1230 miles shorter than the Suez Route was a telling argument in its favour; and the personal interest which King William IV took in the proceedings did much to put the scheme into active execution. Colonel Chesney conducted the expedition, and various departments of government contributed to its outfttting. After an explicit agreement with the Sultan of Turkey, and in
spite of the unspoken opposition of Mohammed Ali, temporary docks and slips were constructed on the Euphrates some two and a half miles below Birejik. At this new river station, named Port William by the Englishmen, two steamboats were launched in the spring of 1836. These iron paddle-wheel steamers, named the Euphrates and the Tigris, had been transported from the mouth of the Orontes to the Euphrates, across the Lebanon Mountains. They were moved in sections along a corduroy road, except where they were rafted along such stretches of water as the Lake of Antioch-an amazing feat that took almost a year to accomplish. Sometimes a boiler, even though mounted on a wagon and dragged by forty pairs of oxen, could only travel at the rate of half a mile a day. For an adequate description of this undertaking, and a wealth of picturesque details, the reader is perforce referred to Colonel Chesney's own Narrative of the Expedition.
