Oct. 27, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
649 
“kick-up.” 
In recent years the motor boat has been in¬ 
troduced in the islands with varying success. I 
observed a few such boats plying the waters of 
Manila Bay. I likewise saw some of these boats 
in the sea near Iloilo. The use of the motor 
boats is limited to the higher officials, and to 
the wealthy Spanish and Filipino. Many of the 
higher classes of natives have introduced the 
bicycle and the motor vehicle in the country, and 
there is no doubt that the motor boat will be 
installed in the same way in time. The native 
is always a little slow about undertaking to in¬ 
troduce new things, especially if they are intri¬ 
cate and expensive. There was much delay in 
getting the automobile and the typewriter intro¬ 
duced. The boats propelled by the simplest forms 
of machinery would sell the best. The native 
understands the operation of gasolene engines to 
some extent, for these engines have been used 
in the country for power developing purposes. 
If there is some one to illustrate the mode of 
operating and caring for the motor boat, the 
Filipino will have but little trouble in under¬ 
standing it. I am convinced that there is quite 
a large field for the use of the modem motor 
boat in the tropical countries where boating is 
in progress the entire year. 
Returned Soldier. 
filipino'modes 
In Siberia. 
(Concluded f rom page 569.) 
A Missing Railroad. 
A few hundred versti from Irkutsk, central 
Siberia, the series of rapids on the Angara have 
always been a serious menace to the navigation 
of that surging river. After repeated disasters, 
the native transport companies decided to build 
jointly a bit of railroad for the transhipment 
of freight. It diverged from the river about a 
mile from the rapids, entered the forest, ana 
continued through its lonely depths, cutting 
across country till it came out at a point on the 
Angara, also about a mile removed from tbe 
rapids. The length of line was some seventeen 
versti—say, a dozen miles. 
It was in the early '70s that this length of 
single track was built—over twenty years before 
the trans-Siberian crept its way across central 
Siberia. Outside of India, probably it was the 
first bit of railroad in Asia—certainly the first 
one in northern Asia. The gauge was seven 
feet. The rails—of a sort—were supplied by a 
distant native iron-foundry. They looked more 
like pig-iron in the rough than rails. The soli¬ 
tary engine, saddled with a square-shaped water- 
tank, had been built by engineering students at 
a technical school at Tiomen, western Siberia. 
It was tbe first engine ever built in northern 
Asia. To “improve the draft,” also “to lessen 
the emission of live cinders,” one of the 
students, named Kocofcki, had been allowed to 
carry out his pet idea of having two smoke¬ 
stacks on the engine—one directly behind the 
other, but separated by about an inch. As the 
engine careened along over the uneven track, 
it had a curious appearance. I knew Kocofcki 
in later years as a division engineer on the 
trans-Siberian, and tried to get a photograph of 
his “pet,” but he had been the object of so much 
ridicule for his “successful failure,” that he pro¬ 
fessed to have not even preserved any such 
memento of it. Though the double-stack en¬ 
gine failed at tbe trials at Tiomen to show any 
“improved draft,” it was sent thus with its 
double chimney into the heart of Siberia. 
Well, the railroad itself was unique. A ticket 
had never been sold or pass granted to travel 
on it. Anybody could ride on its few flat cars. 
It was remote from the posting highway; and 
the river navigation was almost exclusively 
freight. The entire “operating force” of the 
railroad consisted of a mechanician (formerly a 
sawmill employe), fireman, and one brakeman. 
No stations were ever erected—not a switch or 
signal existed—there was only a goods shed at 
each end. There was no regular service—about 
two trips each way being made per week, as 
“cargo offered.” Even a telegraph wire had 
never been strung the length of the track. The 
“brakesie,” fireman and driver had also to give 
a hand—and a sweating one, too—loading and 
unloading the goods. 
HOMES OF BOATMEN. 
But transhipment of goods is always a curse. 
In this case there was a double transhipment— 
from river-boat to rail, and back from rail to 
boat. After a few years, the transport com¬ 
panies were marveling which was the greater 
evil—the occasional wreck-losses in the rapids, 
or the constantly recurring complaints of dam¬ 
ages and losses traceable to too-frequent rough- 
and-tough handling and pilfering. Further, the 
railroad soon degenerated into a clumsy rut. 
The transport companies—used all their lives 
to waterways—seemed to think the railroad 
would require no more attention—once built-—- 
to its upkeep than the broad and deep rivers 
they exploited. Not a single permanent-way 
man was ever employed—not a single tie or 
sleeper (whole tree-lengths) or rail was re¬ 
newed; it was only out of “pure cussedness” 
that derailments were a rarity. 
At this juncture the Russian state had so 
improved the great carriage-way through central 
Siberia, that the transport companies gradually 
abandoned the river traffic for hundreds of 
verstas on either side of where the rapids made 
trouble, and took to the main highway. The 
railroad, never repaired, had naturally fallen 
into almost complete ruin, and was abandoned, 
everything being left as it was, in situ. The 
lone locomotive was acquired by a merchant 
and farmer in another part of Siberia, overhauled, 
and used once a year to drive a threshing 
machine. The few cars had been taken off 
one at a time, on barges, and towed away, and— 
well, nobody knows what became of them. 
Some fifteen years later, along came the ad¬ 
vance engineers and surveyors of the trans- 
Siberian railroad, which had now crept across 
western Siberia, and was on the verge of en¬ 
tering central Siberia. Between Irkutsk and 
the sierra of central Siberia, the work of loca¬ 
tion—due to the topography of the country— 
was extremely problematical. The surveying- 
engineers were detailed-off for hundreds of miles 
on either side, searching the most feasible 
locations. 
4 s ^ ^ 
This is a vast region of sierra, forest; tundra, 
step, and—here and there—of rinc (untranslat¬ 
able: literally “quickmud”), the slaf railroad 
builder’s “holy horror.” For two or three 
years the location of the Kracnoiarck-Irkutsk 
1000-verst stretch-to-be baffled the ingenuity of 
the engineers. Report after report was sent into 
constructional headquarters at Kracnoiarck— 
only to be rejected by other engineers’ reports 
of “trouble ahead.” 
During some of these explorations, various of 
the surveyors gathered from diverse mujik 
trappers and woodmen, items of information 
about “a railroad which had existed in the 
region many years previously,” was operated 
for several years, but had long since been 
