The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-08-14
BIG RAILROAD.
MOST REMARKABLE ENGINEERING
FEAT OF THE CENTURY.

one That Is Full of Significant In
terest at This stage of the Worlds
IJistory-Britnin Has Watched Its
Progress With an Eye to the
Streugthening of Her Indian Bor-
der Defenses, and Asiatic Nations
nave Looked Forward to Trouble
with the Russian Bear Now That
the Railroad Has Bridged the Gulf
uetveen Them and the Home of
OF the Gear.
From the Baltimore American.
ST Petersburg, August.-In the whole
nj Siberia there are not many more people
than there are in Greater New York, yet
Won might put all the United States within
its boundaries without touching the edge
anywhere, and fill up the gaps and God
corners with all the states of Europe west
Of Russia. 1t is an enormous territory, in
fact. in which no one district can be taken
rs representing the rest. so that the most
contradictory opinions concerning it ap-
pears in books according TO the localities
visited by the writer's.
In a general way, ii can be divided into
three zones running right across. To the
north the Tundra, stretching inland from
the Arctic sea, swampy and treeless, rang
ing $50 to 400 miles in width. Then the
Taiga. throwing its spurs northward along
the river valleys, as in its turn it is broken
into by the arabic lands to the south. This
is the Siberian forest. Siberian poplars, -
SAYS Mr. ]. Y. Simpson, with ash-grey
stem and quivering leaves; spruces, with
their regular tsosceles triangles contour
and dark shading; giant larches towering
above their fellows; cedars whose peculiar
branches are crowded knob-like punches
Of green needles; Scotch frs, with Gin
namon-colored upper trunks toning down
10 sombre iron gray; the Oriental pitch
pine and toward the outskirts, birches
with pure white gentle stems, or moisture
loving alder-these form the body, while
the padding is largely left to the small,
but graceful, Siberian spruce with smooth
er bark and darker leaves than the ordi-
nary spruce fir. 1t is a place of gloom he
low and silent conflict in mid-air -
Through it and the third zone of rich ag-
ricultural land on which it borders runs
the new railway that is to open up the
country for colonization, as the Canadian
Pacific is doing for Western Canada.
This wonderful railway, the longest ever
buIlt by a government has nothing to pay
for lis land, nothing to pay for parliament
tary expenses, legal charges or compensa-
ton and is not expected to yield dividend
for generation.
The great project took about forty years
TO think out, and was not of native origin.
Soon after Muraviev carried Russia to the
Pacific seaboard by annexng the mouths
Of the AmaT, an English engineer offered
to lay a tram road across Siberia. In 1857
Collins the American, came forward with
his scheme of the Amur Railway Company
from Irkutsk 10 Chita, which is to form
part of the present line. Next year three
Englishmen, Messrs. Morrison, Horn and
Sleigh proposed to build a railway from
Moscow through Mini Novgorod to Tartar
bay But in their case, as in the others.
nothing was done beyond polite acknowI-
edgement of their suggestions which were
accepted as stimulants to native energy.
As IL had become obvious that, as was
only natural and polite, the railway would
be entirely a Russian enterprise, foreigners
ceased to apply, and plan after plan was