220 SIIJKRIA. 



Ilonco, Ml iiion; olU'ii from the luimiiiu.s ol ih-; Liai Railway, Tura, the toa is Uiaiuly 

 traasmitod to Poim. In ls!)l iho station Tura dospatciieiJ 492,261 ponds of tea; arnoni,' whicL, 

 440,91! to roijii, 7,5;j2 t(; I''lxaii;rinhiiij,', et crti-ia. 'J'lio station of Tiumi-n transmited a total of 

 J(J5.926 ponds, including ]J7,42.{ to Poini, 42,027 to Elcatorintjuif,', et cot<ira. Nizlini Tagil iu 

 tiio sarno yoar despatcliod 4(3,798 ponds, of wliicli 4(»,273 wcro to Perm. Tlie forwaidiuf,' just 

 mentioni.Ml id' a considoiMblo (|uanlity of toa to Ekalerinbiirf,' may bo explained, of <;oursii, 

 not by local consumption but by the fact that part of tlio toa from Ekaterinburg' is also 

 transmitted to Perm, namely 0,9G7 jtouds, while part is distributed amontj llie other .stations 

 of the Ural Railway, 0,598 pouds, and a still larger quantity is forwarded to Moscow by th'i 

 Samara Zlatuonst railway, 19,709 pouds. Eroni Perm tlio tea is sent by the Kama, and thon 

 by the Volga, in the jiiain to Nizhni, which in 1891 despatched 1;j;j,(j32 pouds of this 

 merchandise by rail, the greater part of which was naturally sent to Moscow. 



Moscow is the most important centre of the "Russian tea-trade, the tea being brought 

 there and then distributed thence throughout the Russian Empire. The tea which passes 

 through Siberia and the Russian dominions in Central Asia is conveyed to Moscow by four 

 routes; the first two have already been mentioned, namely, the Uralsk and Samaro-Zlato- 

 oust railways, and also by the Orenburg and Transcaucasian railways. The tea which 

 comes by sea over the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans reaches Moscow principally through 

 Odessa and Graevo, the transit from London through Konigsberg, ami partly through the Baltic 

 ports. The total amount conveyed to Moscow in 1890 by all these routes was 1,109,700 pouds 

 or 54 per cent of the whole impoil. Out of this (jiuantity 969,662 pouds were despatched thence 

 by rail during the same year and the rest was used for local consumption or distributed by 

 carts in the immediate neighbourhood. 



When the Siberian Railway is laid the overland transport will naturally be very much 

 cheaper. It will then also be possible, and indeed when even the Eastern portion of the line 

 is completed, to place Eastern Siberia under the same conditious as the Empire as regards 

 customhouse duties, and to stop the free import of tea and put an end to those misunder- 

 standings which arise from the absence of customhouses within the borders of Eastern 

 Siberia. Until 1888 some parts of Western Siberia and Turkestan were also in this privileged 

 position, partly from political and partly from commercial reasons. 



Between 1860 and 1870 during the Dungan insurrection which sprang up in western 

 China, gradually spread and finally completely cut off the Chinese tea plantations from 

 the markets of Central Asia, the Russians conceived the idea of profiting by this circumstance 

 in order to take possession of these markets and thrust out the foreign tea dealers from them, 

 as the importation of Chinese tea into Central Asia by the former route through Kashgar 

 had at that time become impossible and the only available one was through Siberia, from 

 Kiakhta to Irkutsk. Under these conditions the Russian tea trade in Central Asia had only 

 to compete with Indian tea, imported from India through Afganistan. For this reason the 

 customhouse cordon which stretched from the Caspian Sea from south to north along the 

 Urals and the eastern frontier of the government of Orenburg to the barrier of Zverinogo- 

 lovsk, from which point it turned directly to the east and passed along the former southern 

 frontier of Western Siberia as far as Semipalalinsk and the post of Boukhtarminsk, was 



