14 ACROSS A CONTINENT. 



nations, be the cause of the greatest cataclysm which 

 the world has known. 



I only peeped at the mysteries which lie behind that 

 veil, — to probe them would exhaust a lifetime, — gazed 

 curiously for a moment at the Chinaman and his works, 

 enjoyed some of the sport which his country so gener- 

 ously provides, and then hurried north to see some- 

 thing of the surprising railway which the will of a 

 single man caused to be built across a continent. An 

 imperial pen traced a memorandum on the report of a 

 vice-governor-general,^ a special conference of ministers 

 was summoned, a special commission received orders to 

 make surveys, and the great Trans-Siberian railway 

 came into being. In May 1891 his Imperial Highness 

 the Grand Duke Tsesarievitch emptied a wheelbarrow 

 of earth on the embankment of the future Ussuri line 

 and laid the first stone for the construction of the 

 Siberian railway : at the present time (1904) the 

 traveller may step into his carriage at Moscow, and, 

 with the exception of the short break at present neces- 

 sitated by the passage of the Baikal, travel by rail, 

 amid a luxury unsurpassed in any other portion of the 

 globe, the whole way to Vladivostok, Port Arthur, or 

 Peking. With a stroke of the pen the terrors of Siberia 

 have been swept aside, and the capital of the Celestial 

 Empire has been brought within nineteen days of 

 London. 



Such is the aspect which Asia wears for the traveller. 



1 On a report drawn up in 1885-1886 by Count IgnatieflF, the late Tsar 

 traced with his own hand the following resolution : " I have read many 

 reports of the governors-general of Siberia, and must own with grief and 

 shame that until now the CTOvernment has done scarcely anything towards 

 satisfying the needs of this rich but neglected country. It is time, high 

 time ! " For details of the preliminary steps to the construction of the 

 i-ailway see the ' Official Guide to the Crreat Siberian Railway,' published by 

 the Ministry of Ways and Communications. 



