112 
THE TRANS-SIBEEIAN RAILWAY. 
whether Vladivostok harbour will not, in time silt up, unless ex¬ 
pensive dredging operations be carried out. 
The Amur river forms the boundary between Siberia and Manchuria 
for a distance of more than 1,100 miles between Pokrovskaya and 
Khabarovsk. 
Now a line built along the banks of the river would be liable to 
frequent damage from floods, and it would have to follow the course 
of the stream owing to the configuration of the ground. Last year, 
damage estimated at about £1,000,000, was done to the railway by 
inundations in Transbaikalia, therefore it is not surprising that the route 
across Manchuria, shorter by many hundreds of miles than the 
other, should have been selected as regards Vladivostok. But there 
still remained the disadvantage inherent to that port itself, and it there¬ 
fore followed that an ice free harbour, necessarily lying further to the 
south, was a question seriously discussed and, finally decided upon in 
principle, a considerable time before any practical steps were taken in 
this direction. 
Russia if she wished to develop Siberia’s immense resources, was ob¬ 
liged to seek for a free outlet to the Pacific, as well as inland; other¬ 
wise even an ordinary winter would hava placed her at a disadvantage 
from the point of view of trade. The western terminus of the rail¬ 
way is at Chelyabinsk in the Urals, whence to Vladivostok by the old 
purely Siberian route is a distance of more than 4,700 miles, while the 
railway to the latter (across Manchuria) from Europe will still be by 
far the most stupendous undertaking of its kind in the whole world. 
When this railway is completed, probably even sooner, other great 
main lines will be constructed, such as a railroad from the Siberian 
track at Omsk to Tashkeut, the capital of Turkestan ; a line, too, will 
run from Orenburg to the Asiatic systems and Russia will then have 
her more distant possessions in direct and rapid communication with 
her two capitals, St. Petersburg and Moscow. 
Tho extent to which the railway now under construction has in¬ 
fluenced Siberia is already something quite remarkable. Portions of 
it are thrown open for provisional traffic, as soon as completed, and be¬ 
fore the ballasting work has been properly done. Full advantage is 
taken of this, and whereas the population of Chila, which the railway 
from Europe has not yet reached, was about 5,000 souls three or four 
years ago, it amounted when I was there to 15,000 persons. 
It must not be supposed that the speed is high, for it is not. Trains 
run, including stoppages, which in Russia are long and in Siberia ab¬ 
normally so, at the rate of about twelve miles an hour, but this is very 
much faster than any other mode of locomotion there, and would be 
quite sufficient to account for the rush of people it has brought to the 
country. With a line, unballasted in many places, with sharp curves 
and a hastily improvised personnel, owing to the large and increasing 
demand for railway servants, the speed is quite high enough at present, 
but, in the future, it will be increased. 
It is now time to observe more closely the advantages conferred by 
the railway. 
