THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY. 245 



connecting it with the general system deprives it of the importance of a line of transit. But 

 if the Ural line be produced from Perm to Xizhni, then in the first place, this distance of 

 1,000 versts will cost about 71,000,000 roubles, and in the second, the said line from its 

 technical conditions will present many difficulties in the way of profitable through goods traffic. 

 The second route is 791 versts shorter than the preceding, and besides this, embraces the most 

 populous parts of Western Siberia with a chernoziom and exceedingly fertile zone producing 

 much more grain than is required on the spot. The third route traversing several large admin- 

 istrative and industrial centres at the same time passes through a very unsuitable region in 

 its western half. For about 1,500 versts the line goes through waterless, thinly populated 

 steppes little adapted to civilized life, where in winter rage the fiercest winds, in consequence 

 of which there are frequent snow drifts. In its eastern half this route intersects au extensive 

 mountainous district and the carrying through it of a railway will require a crowd of technical 

 complications and an increase in the cost of construction connected therewith. With all this 

 the route in question is 717 versts longer than the preceding. Thus all the advantages proved 

 to be in favour of prolonging the Samara-Zlatoust-Miass railway through Cheliabinsk, Kurgan 

 and so on. 



In consequence of all the above, the question of the construction of the Great Siberian 

 Railway was resolved on the 21st of February, 1891, in the sense of proceeding in the same year 

 to the building, by direct order of the Treasury, of the railway from the station of Miass to 

 the completion of the Zlatoust-Miass line in construction to Cheliabinsk, and to the carrying 

 out of surveys from Cheliabinsk to Tomsk or some other point of the middle Siberian section. 

 Finally, by an Imperial rescript given the 17th of March, 1891, in the name of his Imperial 

 Highness the Tsarevich, the question of the construction of the Great Siberian Railway was 

 finally and irrevocably decided in the affirmative. 



The Gracious Will of His Majesty the Emperor, clearly expressed in this rescript, put 

 an end to many years of hesitation and doubt as to the accomplishment of the said great 

 undertaking, and now the Government has taken all the necessary measures for the most 

 successful realization possiide of this good conception, which has a perfect right to take one 

 of the first places among the most extensive and important enterprises of the expiring century, 

 not only in this country but in the whole world. 



The above quoted Imperial rescript was promulgated l)y the Grand Duke the Tsarevich 

 on the 12th of May, 1891, in Vladivostok, and then His Imperial Highness laid the first stone 

 of this mighty work. In the same year extensive surveys were commenced from the west and 

 the east, and the possibility soon appeared of establishing the following order for the 

 construction of the Great Siberian Railway. The realization of the enterprise was divided in- 

 to three shifts. To the first was referred the construction of the Western Sil^erian section 

 from Cheliabinsk to the river Obi, an extent of 1,328 versts, and of the middle Siberian section 

 from the river Obi to the town of Irkutsk, a distance of 1,754 versts, as well as the completion 

 of the section Vladivostok-Grafskaya, in course of construction, and the building of the connecting 

 line between the Ural Mines line and the Siberian railway. To the second shift was counted 

 the construction of the sections from Grafskaya to Khabarovka, 3-47 versts long, and from 

 the station of Mysovskaya, tlie point of departure of the line on the other side of Raikal, to 



