The improved economy called for quicker and better means of communication. In 1863 a highway connecting Beirut with Damascus was opened by a French company. It operated a diligence service. With this highway as the main artery a network of roads finally linked the principal towns of Syria-Lebanon. Horse-drawn carriages began to roll. In 1894 another French company inaugurated a Beirut-Damascus-Hawran railroad. This trunk was later extended into Turkey, Iraq and Hejaz. For the first time remote villagers and desert-dwellers were brought within the range of modern civilization. At the turn of the twentieth century Syria-Lebanon was acknowledged to be the most civilized province of the Ottoman empire. Autonomous Lebanon was admittedly the best governed sanjaq.
Increased knowledge, improved sanitation and the mounting rise in the standard of living resulted in an increased population. In 1840 the estimated population of Syria-Lebanon was a million and a quarter, a fraction of what it was in Roman days. In 1900 it reached four million. Pressure from the increase and the urge to escape from Ottoman oppression found a safety-valve in emigration into Egypt. The bulk of the emigrants were Christian Lebanese who sought a new home in British-occupied Egypt. Before 1890 this was the only land to which migration was officially allowed by the Ottomans, who still considered it a part of their empire. There educated Syrians and Lebanese found a wider and more rewarding field for their activity. The British governments of Egypt and the Sudan welcomed to their employment especially those educated in American and British schools. Other emigrants established them- selves as editors of magazines and newspapers, writers, interpreters and teachers and became known as the founders of the school of journalism and writing still dominant in the Arab East.
As the wave of migration swelled it splashed and reached the Americas, where at present there is hardly a good-sized
