COUNT MURAVIEFF IN THE EAST. 285 



Count Muravieff, appointed Governor -General of 

 Eastern Siberia in 1847, broke the long spell of in- 

 activity which had sterilised Russian enterprise east 

 of the Baikal for 160 years, and, in spite of violent 

 opposition from headquarters, and innumerable obstacles 

 on the spot, succeeded, before he laid down his staff 

 of office, in wiping out the inglorious treaty of Nert- 

 chinsk, in bringing the whole of the Amur region 

 under the yoke of Russia, and establishing her firmly 

 on the Pacific seaboard as far south as the borders of 

 Korea, thus putting the finishing touches to the great 

 movement begun three centuries before, which has had 

 for effect the inclusion of half a continent in the 

 dominions of the Tsar, 



I have given this short sketch of the Conquest of 

 Siberia because it explains the circumstances which 

 have led up to the subject of this chapter, the con- 

 struction of the greatest railway which the world 

 has seen. Towns and villages followed in the wake 

 of Cossack pioneers, and with the establishment of a 

 sedentary form of occupation, the necessity of improved 

 communication, without which the administration of law 

 and order in such wide regions was impossible, forced 

 itself upon the attention of the central Government at 

 St Petersburg. 1 Post-roads, such as still afford the 

 only means of communication in many parts of Asiatic 

 Russia, were inaugurated, stretching from town to 

 town, until the links were at length forged into a 

 great chain, which reached across Asia from the Urals 

 to the Pacific. Later on a further advance was made 

 by the introduction of steam traffic on the principal 



1 The centre of administration was moved from Moscow to St Petersburg 

 in the days of Peter the Great, who assumed the reins of government on 

 September 12, 1689, a fortnight after the conclusion of the treaty of Nert- 

 chinsk. 



