Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

82 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. being for the most part foreigners. Yet the main idea was constantly under consideration, and in 1875 an Imperial Commission reported that Vladivostok ought to be connected by rail with the valley of the Amur. Again, fifteen years later, the Minister of Ways of Communi- cation reported to the Czar that “ the Ussuri Railway ought to be laid down with, all pos- sible speed.'5 On the margin of this report Alexander the Third wrote with his own hand : “It is urgent to begin laying down this track at the earliest possible moment.” These words settled the ques- tion. On March 29 (new -style), 1891, an imperial rescript was addressed to th© Czarevitch THE GREAT BRIDGE OVER THE VOLGA. Nicholas (the pres- ent Czar), stating that the order had been given “ to build a continuous line of railway across Siberia to unite the rich Siberian prov- A Railway |nceg raQway SySfem commanded. J of the interior.” This mo- mentous decree was promulgated by the prince upon his landing at Vladivostok from his Eastern tour. On the 31st of the following May, surrounded by a crowd of labourers and convicts standing ready with picks and shovels, he turned the first sod of a railway which was to run for 4,731 miles. Since that date events in the Far East have marched with startling rapidity, and the share taken therein by the Great Siberian Railway, as both cause and effect, has been all-im- portant. The Russian peasant is slow, slothful, and improvident, but a man of indomit- able perseverance withal. These at- tributes may be justly ascribed to the influences of the land in which, he lives. The dis- tances are so great, the monotony so unvarying, in a country where six months of travel scarce serves to change the scene, that haste and speed seem wasted effort; whereas pa- tience and endur- ance are indispen- sable for mere ex- istence. Siberia it- self, apart from the other Russian ter- ritories in Europe and Asia, has an area of 7,824,056 square miles. Its scanty population is about 7,200,000 souls—less than one to the square mile. The inhabitants are mainly grouped Inh^bitants upon the natural line of travel, in the towns which have grown up on the great waterways and are now strung together upon the railway. They are mostly settlers and exiles from European Russia, or the descendants of exiles, both political and criminal. Siberia is divided into the Governments of Tobolsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Priamur, the