6th Dec.
AtrHoven regular communication is kept up, except in the middle of winter, with Eastern Siberia by the comfortable steamers of the Japanese Mail Company, and of the Russian Steam Navigation in the East, very little is known in Shanghai of the trade of the great Russian possession in Asia, As progress is made with the trans-Siberian railway, our acquaintance with the country will extend until the time comes when those who dislike a long sea voyage and the heat of the tropics will have the Siberian route as an alternative to the Canadian for their visits to home; and this too, will, become, no doubt, the route for the mails from Europe to the Far East. An article in the Journal de St. Pétersbourg, which is summarised in the October issue of the Board of Trade Journal, gives some interesting information relating to the import and export trade of Siberia, a trade in which a little more enterprise on the part of Shanghai would secure us a larger share, The western part of Siberia trades, of course, with European Russia. On the worth, endea-yours have been made from time to time to organise a regular trade with England by way of the Polar Sea, but the difficulties of navigation have prevented these endeavours assuming any great importance, though they have never been relinquished; and quite successful attempts have lately been made to import material for the trans-Siberian railway by way of the Arctic Ocean and the Yenisei river. On the south, the chief trade is with the Chinese Empire, and we read that " the development of commercial relations with China has always been considered by the Russian Government a question of the greatest importance, and efforts have constantly been made to effect as many facilities as possible for national trading, and for opening up new markets in the territories of the Celestial Empire. Towards the middle of the present century,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.