110 
THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY- 
teach, him to march, the average length of each day's journey, including 
halts, being a little over twenty miles. But the conditions were most 
unfavourable. The road would be covered by snow, broken into in¬ 
numerable ruts caused by the long caravans bringing tea overland to 
Europe from China; many hundreds of sleighs pass daily. The ther¬ 
mometer would show an average of about 45° Fahrenheit of frost, often 
more, while the wind is so biting that one must feel it in order to 
really appreciate its violence and cold. I know that there is a theory, 
propounded by some people who have never visited Siberia, that al¬ 
though the temperature is very low, the air is still. I can assure you 
that this is often, if not generally, a complete delusion. 
g;It may be thought that the instance which I have quoted, of a long 
march is quite an exceptional case, but this is not so. You will read¬ 
ily ^understand that it could not be, when the distance between the im¬ 
portant towns is taken into consideration. From Krasnoyarsk to 
Irkutsk is 693 miles, from Stryetensk to Blagovyestchensk is 768 miles 
and many similar instances could be quoted. 
Before the Siberian railway was commenced a few years ago, there 
was in reality only one great artery of communication in the country, 
which was open throughout the year. This is the (t great Siberian 
road ” extending from the west as far eastwards as Stryetensk, where 
it ends. 
Thence towards Vladivostok, communication in the summer months 
was and is maintained by means of river steamers and barges, and, 
in the winter, a track for sleighing is made on the frozen stream. 
This is often, indeed generally, desperately rough, as the swift current, 
the numerous bends and varying breadths of the Shilka and Amur, 
cause the ice to pack, thus giving anything but a smooth surface. 
In the spring and autumn months, when the ice is either melting or 
forming, the only means of communication for the distance of 1411 
miles from Stryetensk to Khabarovsk, the capital of the Priamur milit¬ 
ary district, is pack transport, necessarily very slow and uncertain. 
At such times even the mails are delayed for months, letters and a 
very few light packets only being despatched, and they are not in¬ 
frequently lost. 
Various other circumstances, unnecessary to specify here, have 
helped for many years, indeed for some centuries, to keep Siberia in 
the background. Little known to Russians, and still less to others, 
it was looked upon as a land of darkness, a home, if home it could 
be called, for exiles. But this state of things could not last for an 
indefinite period, and when the present Emperor of Russia visited 
the country in 1891, its development was then really taken in hand. 
This had already been decided upon in principle, but opinions in 
Russia had been divided. All were agreed that communications 
must be made, but while one party urged the construction of a rail¬ 
road, another, with equal vehemence, argued that the great Siberian 
carriage road should be continued from Stryetensk eastwards. The 
advocates of the former scheme pointed out with truth, that Canada 
had not waited to build the Canadian Pacific railway until she should 
