Wednesday after a long tour in Siberia, which included the Amur river to Str tensk, the Zeyeto, the Yablonoi mountains, the Ussuri river to Lake Hinka, Saghalien, La Perouse Straits, and the Siberian and Manchurian gold mines.
"The first object to attract travellei attention on arriving at Vadivostock," says Dr. Macgowan, is the initial mark of that iguntic' undertaking, the Trans-Baikal alway, the prosecution of which has been only partially arrested by Siberian snows. It is remarkable that coincident with the famine in European Russia the Unsuri valley, only a fraction of which has been brought under cultivation, has produced this season a prodigious cereal atop, itis: much that the provincial authorities have been obliged to come to the relief of agriculturists by purchasing a year's supply of rye for the army. What an incentive for expediting the work! Strategic considerations were mainly urged for the speedy completion of the railway. Now a new inducement crops up, that. of striving to avert the recurrence of an abnormal abundance in cne portion of {the empire and a wasting famine in another. It is a problem that urgently calls for solution, how the work can be most rapidl prosecuted. Convict tabour, on whic much reliance is placed, is dilatory and expensive, and free labour is not available to meet the dewand. For rea: that the time seemed cogent and satisfactory, it~ was decreed that only the Russiait proletariat should be employed on the construction of the railway, but now it is obvious that without the aid of an army of Chinese the consummation must be delayed to a period that must prove detrimental to the interests of all the Russias. In view of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.