The Czar has, it is declared, sanctioned the construction of
a railway through Siberia, which will, when completed, enable a traveller to journey from the Baltic to the Sea of Ochotak in thirteen days. The railway is to be constructed cheaply, on the plan adopted for the military railways, and will be com- pleted in five years. The line will run far south in Siberia, down to Tomsk, and will touch Lake Baikal. The project, is gigantic, but not, we think, impossible. The Siberian Govern- ment commands in its convicts and settled tribes great masses of labour, it will pay nothing for land, it can select long, flat plains without morasses, and it can work from two ends, at once. If it expropriates land on each side, credits the railway with the saving in military transport, and sells the forests it will open up, the expense ought not to be unendurable.
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