304 TEE EAST CHINESE RAILWAY. 



of the Khingan range and descended again on the far 

 side by a laborious zigzag, taking an hour and fifty-five 

 minutes to cover a distance of ten miles. No one but a 

 Russian engineer could ever have evolved so cumbrous 

 and intricate a method of surmounting a mountain- 

 range, and even he has at last done what any one else 

 would have done at the outset — made a tunnel through 

 it. Mountains are the bugbear of the Kussian. He 

 has none to speak of in his own country, and he does 

 not understand them when he comes across them else- 

 where. It is perhaps fortunate for him, therefore, that 

 he has not had to make a single tunnel between Moscow 

 and Irkutsk. 



On the first opportunity I alighted to inspect the 

 line and compare it with the Siberian track. The rails 

 were certainly heavier, — perhaps 27 lb. to the foot, as 

 compared with 18 on the Siberian sections, though still 

 merely spiked down to the. sleepers, and a powerful 

 compound engine stood at the end of the five business- 

 like armoured carriages — for east of the Baikal the cars 

 are protected with J-inch steel plate, capable of turning 

 a bullet — in place of the light freight-engines used on 

 the Siberian sections. 



Night found us still speeding through a mountainous 

 country ; but when I awoke in the morning it was to 

 gaze upon an absolute level, which gradually resolved 

 itself from a grass-covered steppe into a sea of cultiva- 

 tion. At midday on the 28th we reached Kharbin, a 

 rapidly growing town, with large government-built — 

 Hussian Government of course — brick buildings spring- 

 ing up in all directions. Military occupation stares you 

 in the face here, and a large camp stands just to the 

 south of the town ; but this is an exception. For the 

 most part troops are not paraded along the line for the 

 satisfaction of travellers, and one might travel along 



