288 THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY. 



of Ministers issued an order, sanctioned by the Emperor, 

 in February 1891, (l) to approve the direction of the 

 Ussuri hne from Vladivostok to Grafskaya station, 

 (2) to commence the construction of the Mias-CheHa- 

 binsk line in 1891, and (3) to conduct surveys in the 

 same year from Cheliabinsk to Tomsk or some other 

 point of the mid - Siberian section, and from the ter- 

 minus of the first section of the Ussuri line to Khar- 

 barovsk, and by an imperial rescript issued in March 

 1891 the question of the construction of the great 

 Trans-Siberian railway was definitely settled. 



It must be admitted that in constructing a line across 

 Asia, Russia has become responsible for one of the 

 achievements of the world. An English officer, whose 

 lot has been cast for the most part in the East, once 

 said to me that Russia had done two big things — she 

 had carried on the Russo-Turkish war and she had 

 built the Siberian railway, and there can be few who 

 will deny that, as far at any rate as the latter is con- 

 cerned, he was undoubtedly correct. In little more 

 than ten years 6000 miles of railway have been built, 

 and the journey from London to Shanghai, even with 

 the present imperfect running, has been reduced from 

 upwards of a month via the Suez Canal to nineteen 

 days. The cost has, of course, been enormous — far 

 greater indeed than it ought to have been, and the 

 estimate rose as the line progressed. At one time 

 £40,000,000 was suggested as the probable cost of the 

 undertaking; but by the end of 1899 £53,000,000 had 

 already been spent, and the total official estimate rose 

 to £82,500,000. By the end of last year (1903) even 

 this stupendous sum had been exceeded, and an official 

 publication, commemorating the tenth anniversary of 

 the Imperial Committee of the Siberian Railway, was 

 issued, which placed the total cost of the line through 



