THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD
After returning to Wladivostok, accompanied by a young Danish gentleman
who was kindly lent to me by Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, and who spoke
English and Russian, I spent a week on the Ussuri Railway, the eastern
section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, going as far as the hamlet of
Ussuri on the Ussuri River at the great Ussuri Bridge, beyond which
the line, though completed for 50 _versts_, was not open for traffic.
Indeed, up to that point from Nikolskoye trains were run twice daily
rather to “settle the line” than for profit, and their average speed
was only twelve miles an hour. The weather was brilliant, varied by a
heavy snowstorm.
The present Tsar is understood to be enthusiastic about this railroad.
During his visit to Wladivostok in 1891, when Tsarevitch, he
inaugurated the undertaking by wheeling away the first barrowful of
earth and placing the first stone in position, after which, work was
begun simultaneously at both ends.
The eastern terminus of this great railroad undertaking is close to
the sea and the Government deep water pier, at which the fine steamers
from Odessa of the Russian “Volunteer Fleet” discharge their cargoes.
The station is large and very handsome, and both it and the noble
administrative offices are built of gray stone, with the architraves
of the doors and windows in red brick. Buffets and all else were in
efficient working order. In the winter of 1895-96 only third and fourth
class cars were running, the latter chiefly patronized by Koreans and
Chinese. Each third class carriage is divided into three compartments
with a corridor, and has a lavatory and steam-heating apparatus. The
backs of the seats are hooked up to form upper berths for sleeping, and
as the cars are eight feet high they admit of broad luggage shelves
above these. The engines which ran the traffic were old American
locomotives, but those which are to be introduced, as well as all the
rolling stock, are being manufactured in the Baltic provinces. So also
are the rails, the iron and steel bridges, the water tanks, the iron
work required for stations, and all else.
Large railway workshops with rows of substantial houses for artisans
have been erected at Nikolskoye, 102 _versts_ from Wladivostok, for the
repairs of rolling stock on the Ussuri section, and were already in
full activity.
There is nothing about this Ussuri Railway of the newness and
provisional aspect of the Western American lines, or even of parts of
the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The track was already ballasted as far
as Ussuri (327 _versts_), steel bridges spanned the minor streams, and
substantial stations either of stone or decorated wood, with buffets at
fixed distances, successfully compare both in stability and appearance
with those of our English branch lines. The tank houses are of hewn
stone. Houses for the employés, standing in neatly fenced gardens,
are both decorative and substantial, being built of cement and logs
protected by five coats of paint, and contain four rooms each. The
crossings are well laid and protected. Culverts and retaining walls
are of solid masonry, and telegraph wires accompany the road, which
is worked strictly on the block system. The aspect of solidity and
permanence is remarkable. Even the temporary bridge over the Ussuri,
1,050 feet in length, a trestle bridge of heavy timber to resist the
impact of the ice, is so massive as to make the great steel bridge, the
handsome abutments of which were already built, appear as if it would
be a work of supererogation.
Up to that point there are no serious embankments or cuttings, and the
gradients are easy. The cost of construction of the Ussuri section is
50,000 roubles per _verst_, a rouble at this time being worth about
2s. 2d. This includes rolling stock, stations, and all bridges except
that over the Amur, which was to cost 3,000,000 roubles, but may now be
dispensed with owing to the diversion of the route through Manchuria.
Convict labor was abandoned in 1894, and the line in Primorsk is being
constructed by Chinese “navvies,” who earn about 80 cents per day,
and who were bearing the rigor of a Siberian winter in well-warmed,
semi-subterranean huts, the line being pushed on as much as possible
during the cold season. For the first 102 _versts_, it passes along
prettily wooded shores of inlets and banks of streams, and the country
is fairly well peopled, judging from the number of sleighs and the
bustle at the six stations _en route_. The line as far as Nikolskoye
was opened in early November, 1893, and in a year had earned 280,000
roubles. The last section had only been open for eight weeks when I
travelled upon it.
Nikolskoye, where I spent two pleasant days at the hospitable
establishment of Messrs. Kuntz and Albers, is the only place between
Wladivostok and Ussuri of any present importance. It is a _village_ of
8,000 inhabitants on a rich rolling prairie, watered by the Siphun. It
has six streets of grotesque width, a _verst_ and a half long each.
There is no poverty. It is a place of rapid growth and prosperity, the
centre of a great trade in grain, and has a large flour mill owned by
Mr. Lindholm, a Government contractor. It has a spacious market-place
and bazaar, and two churches. It reminds me of parts of Salt Lake City,
and the houses are of wood, plastered and whitewashed, with corrugated
iron roofs mainly. A few are thatched. All stand in plots of garden
ground. Utilitarianism is supreme. I drove for 20 miles in the region
round the settlement, and everywhere saw prosperous farms and farming
villages on the prairie, Russian and Korean, and found the settlers
kindly and hospitable, and surrounded by material comfort. Nikolskoye
is a great military station. There were infantry and artillery to
the number of 9,000, and there, as elsewhere, large new barracks were
being pushed to completion. An area of 50 acres was covered with brick
barracks, magazines, stables, drill and parade grounds, and officers’
quarters, and the military club is a really fine building. Newness,
progress, and confidence in the future are as characteristic of
Nikolskoye as of any rising town in the Far West of America.
The farther journey, occupying the greater part of two days and a
night, except when near the swamps of the Hanka Lake, is through a
superb farming region. Large villages with windmills are met with along
the line for the first 30 _versts_, as far as the buffet station of
Spasskoje. The stoneless soil, a rich loam 6 feet and more in depth,
produces heavy crops of oats, wheat, barley, maize, rye, potatoes, and
tobacco. Beyond Spasskoje and east of the Hanka Lake up to the Amur a
magnificent region waits to be peopled.
Well may Eastern Siberia receive the name of Russia’s “Pacific Empire,”
including as it does the Amur and Maritime provinces, with their
area of 880,000 square miles,[32] rich in gold, copper, iron, lead,
and coal, and with a soil which for a vast extent is of unbounded
fertility. When China ceded to Russia in 1860 the region which we
call Russian Manchuria, she probably did so in ignorance of its vast
agricultural capacities and mineral wealth.
The noble Amur, with its forest-covered shores, is navigable for
1,000 miles, and already 50 merchant steamers ply upon it, and its
great tributary the Ussuri can be navigated to within 120 miles of
Wladivostok. The great basin of the Ussuri, it is estimated, could
support five million people, and from Khabaroffka to the Tu-men, it is
considered by experts that the land could sustain from 20 to 40 to the
square mile, while at present the population of the Amur and Ussuri
provinces is only ⁴⁄₅ths of a man to the square mile!
Grass, timber, water, coal, minerals, a soil as rich as the prairies of
Illinois, and a climate not only favorable to agriculture but to human
health, all await the settler, and the broad, unoccupied, and fertile
lands which Russian Manchuria offers are clamoring for inhabitants.
To set against these advantages there are the frozen waterways and
the ice-bound harbor. It is utterly impossible that an increasing
population will content itself without an outlet for its produce.
A port on the Pacific open all the year is fast becoming as much a
commercial as a political necessity, and doubtless the opening of the
Trans-Siberian Railroad four years hence will settle the question (if
it has not been settled before) and doom the policy which has shut
Russia up in regions of “thick ribbed ice” to utter extinction.
In the Maritime Province, Russia is steadily and solidly laying the
foundations of a new empire which she purposes to make as nearly as
possible a homogeneous one. “No foreigner need apply”! The emigrants,
who are going out at the rate of from 700 to 1,000 families a year,
are of a good class. Emigration is fostered in two ways. By the first,
the Government grants assisted passages to heads of families who are
possessed of 600 roubles (about £60 at present), which are deposited
with a Government official at Odessa, and are repaid to the emigrant
on landing at Wladivostok. The industry and thrift represented by
this sum indicate a large proportion of the best class of settlers.
Under the second arrangement, families possessed of little capital or
none receive free passages. On arriving, emigrants of both classes
are lodged in excellent emigrant barracks, and can buy the necessary
agricultural implements at cost price from a Government depôt, advice
as to the purchase being thrown in. Each family receives a free
allotment of from 200 to 300 acres of arable land, and a loan of 600
roubles, to be repaid without interest in thirty-two years, the young
male colonists being exempted from military service for the same
period. Already much of the land along the line as far as the Ussuri
has been allotted, and houses are rapidly springing up, and there is
nothing to prevent this fine country from being peopled up to the Amur,
the rivers Sungacha and Ussuri, which form the boundary of Russia
from the Hanka Lake to Khabaroffka, giving a natural protection from
Chinese brigandage. In addition to direct emigration, large numbers of
time-expired men, chiefly Cossacks, are encouraged to settle on lands
and do so.
It would be shortsighted to minimize the importance of the present
drift of population to Eastern Siberia, which is likely to assume
immense proportions on the opening of the railway, or the commercial
value of that colossal undertaking, which is greatly enhanced by the
treaty under which Russia has taken powers to run the Trans-Siberian
line through Chinese Manchuria. The creation of a new route which
will bring the Far East within 6,000 miles and 16 days of London, and
cheapen the cost of the transit of passengers very considerably, cannot
be overlooked either. The railroad is being built for futurity, and is
an enterprize worthy of the great nation which undertakes it.[33]
FOOTNOTES:
[32] The area of France is 204,000, and that of the British Isles
120,000 square miles.
[33] I am very glad to be able to fortify my opinion of the solid
and careful construction of this line by that of Colonel Waters,
military attaché to the British Embassy at St. Petersburg, who has
recently crossed Siberia, and desires to give emphatic testimony to
“the magnificent character of the great railway crossing Siberia,”
as well as by that of another recent traveller, Mr. J. Y. Simpson,
who, in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for January, 1897, in an article “The
Great Siberian Iron Road,” after a long description of the laborious
carefulness with which the line is being built, writes thus: “Lastly,
one is impressed with the _extremely finished_ nature of the work.”