The record-union., 1897-04-30
The ManChurian Railway.

Although a great deal has already
been written on the subject it will still
be long time before Western Europe
thoroughly appreciates the great i'm
portance of the enormous changes which
Russia's railway to the Pacific Coast
will rapidly effect in regard to Siberia
and the Far East. What the Trans
Caspian Railway has done for Central
Asia, and is still doing by its extensions
now being made toward Herat on one
side and to Tashkent, Andijan and Mar
GILLIAN on the other, will be repeated on
a larger scale by the progress of the
great trunk line through Siberia and
Manchuria; and in the not very distant
future these two railway systems of ST.
IBERIA and Central Asia will be united
across the intervening space between
Turkistan and Orenburg or Omsk.
Russia has secured a passage for her
Siberian railway through Manchuria
by clever use of the situation created
by the late war between Japan and
China; and Russians, who are taught by
their newspapers to believe that only
England profits by other peoples mis-
fortunes. may now admire an example
of this sort in their own country. The
circumstances recall to mind those Of
Russia's acquisition of Chinese terri
tory in 1860, when the presence of Eng
lish and French troops in Pekin gave
General Ignatieff the opportunity of
putting Russia into possession of the
large maritime province of the Amur
and Ussuri. The present case, it is
true, is not one of immediate annexa-
ton, but the locomotive cannot fail to
carry Russian ascendency into the wilds
of Manchuria as easily as it has been
introduced into Bokhara the noble. The
railway through Bokhara and the COM
ing one through Manchuria are signifi-
cant signs of Russia's power and ex-
pansiveness in the East; and the time
may come when third Russian railway
will pass through Persia. This railway
policy of encroaching on neighboring
ASiatic States is only in it's infancy
one of the most remarkable features
in the present case is the change which
has come over China as regards the ma
tive land of its reigning dynasty, which
was always SO jealousy guarded against
foreign intrusion. Russian travellers like
the late General Prjevalsky might
and distribute the Cars portrait among
the natives with impunity, but that
kind of scientific exploration was never
attempted in Manchuria. BY the Aigun
treaty of 1893 the right was conceded
to Russian merchants of freely navi-
eating the Sungari, a Manchurian trib-
utary Of the Amur, but the exercise of
that right was never in fact permitted
The first Russian trader. a man named
I ChebOtareff, who appeared on the Sun
gari in 1861, was murdered at Sansin
and down to the time of the japanese
war no more Russian boats were ever
seen on that river. A few years ago
well-known Chinese authority de-
clared to a friend of mine that the Chi
nese would never allow Russians to
navigate the Sungari. Nevertheless, as
soon as the issue of the war was seen
TO be going Enthusiastically against China,
! the Russians, with their clever diplo-
macy, obtained the practical recognition
of the right of using the river, and
Count Cassini at Pekin, in telegraphing
the fact to the Governor General of the
Amur District, advised him to take ad-
vantage of it at once. Accordingly the
Anur Steamboat Company sent q
steamer and two barges right up the
Sungari to Tsitsihar, or very near to
that town, and they met with a good re-
ception from the Chinese authorities
ST. Petersburg Correspondence London
Times