The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-28
THE MAGNITUDE OF THE SIBE-
 | A

MAN NALL " A |. The Siberian railway has just beer called genuine Rusei'n unde .aking inasmuch as everything in connection
 with it is of immense, not to say. un
 precedented, dimensions This does not
 aply to the mere figures, although they
 are telling enough, but the magnitude
 of the railway is far more comprehen-
 sive and widespread than one is at first
 inclined to imagine.
 Beginning with a few figures, not less | than 19,000,000 working days have been | required for the earthwork alone. The | length of the railway, apart from Flu | rOpean connections and the Mantchurian railway from Tschiejabinsk (which is 2,760 kilometres distant from St. Peters burg), amounts to 6,053,S3 kilometres; the aggregate length of the bridges Is 4S,5 kilometres; snow screens are re- quired over a distance of 909 kilometres. The rolling stock necessary for the
 traffic at the outset has an aggregate length of S6.5 kilometres and the tele- graph wires have an aggregate length of 11,000 kilometres. The cost of the railway was originally calculated at a comparatively low figure, but there was not taken into consideration tha innumerable undertakings which are more or less inseparable from the build ing of and the future satisfactory and adequate working of this immense line and which entail a vast and additional expenditure.
 And these subsequent expenses of course, not by any means limited to the mere connection of various localities, by means of additional railways, with the trunk line or with each other. There are considerations of industrial, commercial, civilizing, and scientific nature. A pure and simple connection by means of railway betwen the Pa cfic ocean and European Russia would mainly serve military purposes But Rusia has other far wider plans with her new railway---plans which have grown with the railway and which are still growing. There is, in the first instance, the colonization of Siberia, the laying dry of bogs, the cutting down of forests, utilization of peat, san itary measures for the protection of the settlers and their cattle, the building of schools, the supply of the requisite agricultural machinery and imple- ments, location of the settlers, the sup ply of building material, the making of roads and bridges, the establishment of mutual insurance, the survey of the country, the establishment of the pos tai service, etc.
 The building of the Siberian railway naturally led to the task of making nu merous rivers navigable, so as to facili- tate the transportation of the building material; to the formation of an ex- tensive mining industry for the produc- tion of iron and coal; to the erection of rolling mills for rail; to the building of Workmen's colonies, and of technical railway schools; to the erection of ce- ment and numerous other factories, etc. It became necessary to fully in vestigate the possibilities of navigating the Arctic ocean and the large rivers. The Baikal lake had to be surveyed and provided with marks for naviga tion, and it became necessary to in- crease the volunteer fleet with three large ocean-going steamers for the transport of persons and goods. The de- of connecting the Siberian railway with Archangel also soon be- came evident, etc. The Russian coloni- zation in Siberia has been going on, very gradually, for hundreds of years, but the new era commenced with the year 1860, when the Amur and the Us- surf districts were ceded to Russia by China. On May 30, 1891 the present Czar cut the first sod of the Siberian in Viadivostock as the repre- sentative of his father British En gineering.