THE NOTE OF STATE SECRETARY VON HUBBENET. 287 



organised for the purpose of selecting the most suitable 

 route to satisfy the requirements of the mining industry 

 and Siberian transport, having come to the conclusion 

 that the two interests were incompatible. This line, 

 projected by Colonel Bogdanovitch, had for its starting- 

 point Perm, and reaching Ekaterinburg in 1878 was 

 completed as far as Tiumen in 1884 ; and it was not 

 until 1891 that the much-discussed scheme for a great 

 trans-continental railway was finally decided on. By 

 this time there were three lines, any one of which could 

 be extended east beyond the Urals, and the choice 

 eventually adopted was made in accordance with a 

 detailed note presented by the then Minister of Ways 

 and Communications, State Secretary Von Hubbenet, 

 on November 15, 1890. 



After pointing out that the possible points of de- 

 parture of a trans-Siberian line to Nizhneudinsk were 

 (1) Tiumen on the Ural line, (2) Orenburg on the 

 Orenburg line, and (3) Mias on the Zlatoust-Mias line, 

 he demonstrated the advantages of a line starting from 

 the last-named as being the shortest from Moscow, the 

 cheapest to construct, and the one passing through the 

 most populous localities of Western Siberia ; while he 

 objected to the Orenburg line on the grounds of its 

 great length and cost owing to technical difficulties, 

 and to the Tiumen line as necessitating the further 

 construction of a costly line of 1000 versts from Perm 

 to Nijni-Novgorod to preserve its commercial import- 

 ance. Urged by the Ministers of War and Foreign 

 Affairs, he also attached great importance to the con- 

 struction of the Ussuri line for connecting Vladivostok 

 with the Amur Basin, which, at the instigation of 

 Count Ignatieff and Baron Korf, had already been 

 sanctioned by the Emperor in 1887. 



As a result of these representations, the Committee 



