forests of the Tundra over its thousands of miles between the Uralian range and Kamchatka. Americans and Englishmen were the real authors of the splendid and romantic scheme for spanning the Asiatic continent with a railway from end to end. I met here and there in the Russian Empire a number of Englishmen engaged very successfully in trade, but they were almost invariably thus working on their own account. The time is almost past when the Russian Government will engage an Eng lishman or an American to direct public works, although in the not remote past nearly every position of great responsibil. ity was committed to clever men of one of those nationalities. The Russian administrators now rely on native engineers; but, for all that, it is not likely that the TransSiberian Railway would have been ventured on but for the impetus given to the scheme by Anglo-Saxon brains. In 1857 an American named Collins came forward with his grand scheme for the formation of an Amur Railway Company from Irkutsk to Chita. Although his plan was not officially taken up, it was carefully kept in mind, and it will actually form the main and central part of the present line now so rapidly being constructed. An English engineer offered to lay a tram-road across Siberia, after Muravieff had carried Rus sia to the Pacific by annexing the mouths of the Amur. In 1858 three enterprising Englishmen offered to construct a railway from Moscow through Nijni-Novgorod to Tartar Bay. Though all proposals by foreigners have been politely rejected, yet they have been regarded as good stimulants to native energy. It took forty years to think out this colossal undertaking. One great Asiatic-Russian line is actually completed, so that a passenger can travel continuously, with every luxury, from St. Petersburg to Merv; and thus it is evident that a revolution is at hand in many of the conditions of civilization which have been carelessly regarded as perfectly stable. The international equilibrium is shortly going to be seriously upset, and it would be wise for other nations to weigh well in anticipation the contingencies which must inevitably arise. Of course a slender and roughly constructed artery of communication, like this new railroad, may by many superficial minds be sup posed to be no very important factor in the world's progress. Those who think thus are dangerously out of the true reckoning. Stupendous colonization schemes will be set on foot as soon as the Siberian line is completed. Let us just for a moment consider, in the first place, what an effect this undertaking will certainly have on the mere matter of relative populations. One of the chronic troubles of the Rus sian Government is that the population of the Empire is distributed in an uneven manner, which renders both comfort and prosperity hopeless. It happens th those are the most thickly inhabited d tricts, for the most part, which are least able to sustain the people in vast numbers. Immense numbers of villages are scattered through the vast forests of central and western Russia, while the great wheat-growing plains of the center and southwest are very sparsely inhabited. Then, again, the infatuation of the military oligarchy has been seen in the plan on which all the railways, except this new Siberian line, have been designed for purely warlike purposes. The Emperor Nicholas I. insisted on all the lines being developed without the slightest regard to the wants of the towns and the necessities of commerce. Even the natural facilities for certain engineering operations were not allowed by that autocrat to be taken for a moment into consideration. His engineers were once consulting him as to the expediency of taking the line from St. Petersburg to Moscow by a slight detour, to avoid some very troublesome obstacles. The Czar took up the chart, and with a pencil ruled a straight line from the old capital to the new and handed it to them. saying, "There, gentlemen, that is to be the plan of the line!" And there is certainly not a straighter railway in the world for a length of six hundred miles. But the Siberian line is being constructed with the most careful and proper regard to other than merely military interests, though these will of course be constantly kept in view. The railway is being laid down in accordance with the most correct scientific rules, and also in a main direction which will be most serviceable to the development of the country. It runs across the great rivers as near as possi ble to their upper waters, just about where But this will induce an immense tide of population. Russian peasants are now every winter by millions in a state of semi-starvation. Thousands of these will ere long daily stream to the new eastern land over which the Muscovite eagle floats. Siberia at present contains a population of only four millions, which is less, by more than a million, than London reckons. And yet within the borders of Siberia the whole of the United States of America could be inclosed, with plenty of room to be spared for the further accom ROUTE OF THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY y his famous voyage round the Arctic as modation of a nice collection of little gions further north. The next is that all The Russian Government is the narrowest and most exclusive in the world in most matters of administration, but in some it is actually the most generous and liberal. For instance, it has thrown open the gold-fields alike to native and foreign enterprise, absolutely without restriction, except that all gold gathered must be assayed at the Government offices, and that ten per cent. of the net proceeds must go to the Crown. I was not a little astonished, when contemplating the wonders of the Nijni-Novgorod Exhibition, with the enormous gilded pyramid representing the mass of gold that has been taken from Siberian mines. When the line is completed, all the gold needed by Russia will be secured from her own all re ground for hardy hunters, the home strange, uncouth tribes. Immensely mot valuable is the far wider zone of the Taig the most magnificent belt of forest in th world. What a marvelous tract is thi Siberian forest! I shall never forget th weird and solemn yet profoundly delight ful impression made on my own mind b my first ride of at least a thousand mile through the birch, oak, spruce, larch, ant pine forests of European Russia, which cover myriads of square miles of the north and center of the land, and which, strag gling across the low Ural hills, called, mountains only by courtesy, thicken, broaden, and deepen into the grand sweep of the Siberian arboreal belt. Glorious and gloomy, silent yet musically murmur ing, terrible with its secret perils, but fascinating to the exile longing to escape into its recesses, this Taiga kingdom of the sublime trees of God's own right hand planting defies competition in any other province of the earth. Giant cedars and pitch pines, somber Scotch firs and in breadth. The Tundra is, of course, in Oriental spruces, graceful larches and ele the long winter one frozen snow-sheet. gant birches, with occasional lines of soar In the brief summer it is swampy, steam- ing poplars and moisture-loving alders, and swarming with mosquitoes. It is form the haunts of bears and wolves, foxes almost totally treeless; but it is a training- and lynxes, south of the northern border domains. The three great zones of Siberia are not properly understood by superficial students of geography. The first is the Tundra, the vast region stretching through the northern subarctic regions. Here we have one of the appalling belts of the earth's surface. It runs right along that gigantic expanse of at least five thousand miles of Asiatic continental soil, and is from two hundred to five hundred miles land of the marten, sable, blue fox, and white bear. The third zone is that of the grand steppes, the rich, arable lands sheeted with flowers like an endless garden, variegated by woods, and holding in their lap ranges of beautiful mountains, all running with fairly uniform trend from north to south, with its very center gemmed by the deepest lake on earth, the mysteribus Baikal. Through the spurs of the Taiga, running irregularly into the steppe one, runs the new railway. Thus the ine taps the chief resources of the counry. It will open the forests, the arable and, the cattle-breeding regions, and the nineral districts with their boundless capabilities of development by the capital of the world. Capitalists and speculators will soon pegin to see in Siberia the most promising field left on the globe for their exploitation, and this marvelous new country will, with its railway facilities, in a very short time begin to invite energy and enterprise in a degree never yet equaled. But the chief of all results in the near future, and the one persistently kept in view by the astute politicians of the Czar, will be the inevitable honeycombing of the whole Chinese Empire by a railway system. Only those who are either willfully or stupidly blind to all the indications of future possibilities in Asia-that seed-pot of the next age can ignore the certainty of the transformation of the Yellow Land. It is, indeed, a striking combination of signs απέτι shall & which we now witness. While we are all talking about the partition of China, and while one Power after another is nibbling bits out of the quivering mass that lies helplessly awaiting vivisection, Russia is stealing on across the Taiga and the Siberian steppes to the consummation of her destiny. Britain as an Eastern power, as Lord Beaconsfield loved to describe her, will be profoundly affected by the construction of the Siberian line. As Russia goes forward with her scheme, her great competitor, and, as I believe, her inevitable antagonist, Great Britain, is silently and secretly being impelled to prepare for a stupendous coming struggle. I am one of those who love the Russian people. I' have moved among them, delight to read their literature, pity their impotence to shake off the horrible incubus of a mockpaternal tyranny, and feel all the fascination of their endless good humor, their profound sadness, their passion for music in the plaintive minor mode, their affectionate hospitality, and their childlike religious fervor. Who has learned their language without coming to feel that it is as strong as the German, as sonorous as the Spanish, and as musical as the Italian? Who can doubt the greatness in the future of the nation now numbering over 130,000,000, rapidly increasing, and about to unfold the hidden resources of two continents, in a way which will create universal astonishment? It is with profound sadness that any one who has learned to know and love such a nation forms the conviction that the infatuation of its bureaucrats will impel it to incur a fearful fate. The collision of the Moscovite and Anglo-Saxon races will not be avoided, though it may for years be warded off by diplomacy. The further end of the railway is already finished. But meanwhile the Manchurian line, over which the diplomatic "Battle of Newchang” has so long raged, will be built, and for this Russia will fight England with all the arts of her bureaucratic strategy. She will contend only diplomatically for a few years, but will never renounce her object, TRAINS MOVING ON THE FROZEN IRTISH RIVER NEAR BRIDGE which is to control North China. And the British people, with the secret support of the Japanese, will as jealously resist the absorption of any part of China by Russia as they have resented the encroachments of Russia on the Ottoman dominions in the west. The English mind is wedded to the doctrine of the " open door," and the Russian to that of the "closed door;" but these doctrines, unfortunately, cannot be carried into practice without interference with the people who happen to live behind the door. England can keep the door open only by controlling those behind it, and Russia can keep it shut only by asserting her paramount claim within the door. Herein lies the world's approaching trouble. Many countries will be drawn into the conflict which is coming. The Siberian Railway is meantime making for peace, for it is diverting all the energies of the Russian Government, and is engaging that attention which was too much concentrated on affairs in Turkey, Greece, Servia, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Austria. The peace rescript of the amiable young Czar exactly suited the plans of the Russian Ministry, who are the ablest and most unscrupulous bureaucrats in Europe.. They want, at any cost and at any sacrifice, to see peace preserved till the railway link is finished; but those sanguine spirits in various countries are being grievously gulled who imagine that we are about to witness, whatever the tentative results of the Peace Conference, that retrenchment and reduction of aggressive armaments which every humane heart desires. Russia does not covet India, but she does intend to appropriate, and imagines that Providence has appointed her to possess, Persia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Tibet, and China. This may sound like a ridiculously large statement, but only those who are unfamiliar with Russian literature can deride it or question its truth. The whole Russian nation is deeply imbued with the dangerous notion that Heaven specially favors " Holy Russia," and specially despises all the rest of the world. The mission of Russia is religious. And that is exactly what the average Muscovite would say is the mission of the Siberian Railway. It is to evangelize as well as to civilize Asia, and to propagate the Orthodox Church, More over, wherever Russia sends her forces, there the clergy go, in front of all. And it is astonishing how she succeeds in the task of assimilating to her religion the subject races. The whole of the east of Asia is Mongolian, and the Mongolian races are mainly Buddhists, but the blending of Muscovite and Mongolian will be an easy process. The fusion of races is already proceeding in Siberia, and it is proceeding by the help of the Church as well as the army. Just as Russian converts and churches have silently sprung up in great numbers in Palestine, so that the Russian religion has quietly and coolly taken possession of the Holy Land under the very nose of the Sultan, so will the same Greek Church go on to dot with its domed sanctuaries all the north of China. Difficulties with China are springing up at once, now that the line has reached the region east of Yeniseisk. On the Chinese Government learning of its progress into the heart of Asia, all the cunning of the Celestials has been brought into play. While apparently submitting to all that Russia demands as to control in Manchuria, trouble has begun in that very region. Many competent critics consider it very problematical whether the railway will ever be completed at all. Others consider that it cannot be finished for at least another ten years. Unforeseen obstacles of the most formidable character have suddenly arisen. These are all in Manchuria. They are entirely owing to the treachery of the Chinese, and their complicity with robber bands. The contractors in Manchuria have entered into a tacit understanding with bands of robbers; so that, though whole sections of the line are allowed to be laid, they are then torn up, so that all the work has to be done over again. This has been going on for several months. Neither the officials nor the troops are able to cope with the marauders. The rails mysteriously disappear, and it is supposed that they are made into pikes for the Chinese braves. How easy it is to see that, annoying as this is to Russia, it is really the best thing that could be thought of for her future success, and the worst possible misfortune for the Tsung-li-Yamen ! Russia cannot be thwarted in her great schemes, and she will be compelled to send into Manchuria large forces, which will of course |