SIBERIA, AND THE WAY IN. T HAT Fate, with the smile
of irony on her face, who presides over explorers and inventors, has refused the opening-up of Siberia by sea to the man who has spent his life in trying to get a deaf world to understand that a water-way exists into the heart of Northern Asia if seamen would only use it. Instead of Captain Wiggins being the first man to effect the junction between the sea-going ships and a steam flotilla on the Yenissei River, it has fallen to the lot of another navigator. While a body of English seamen were navigating the estuary of the Siberian Mississippi, the originator of the sea-route into Asia was compelled to remain in England, and take no part in the actual consummation of his most cherished schemes. It must not be supposed, however, that, as sometimes happens, Captain Wiggins was unfairly deprived of his rightful honours. It was solely due to a series of adverse circumstances that he was not present when the men who had sailed north from England floated their ships upon water that had descended from the mountains of China, and at an Arctic wharf trans- ferred their freight to vessels destined to traverse an inland navigation stretching to the frontier of Mongolia. Captain Wiggins's steamer the Labrador,' a vessel specially built for the Arctic seas, was to have joined in the ex- pedition, but unfortunately she met with an accident which prevented her doing so. It must, however, have been no small satisfaction to the gallant " adventurer " to know that the successful ships were commanded by men who had been mates in the 'Labrador,' and that his own brother was in charge of the tug that accompanied the larger ships. Captain Wiggins also, no doubt, will take a, large share in the future development of the traffic between England and the Siberian river. Nevertheless, the fact remains, that at the moment when it was most fitting that he should have been present, the irony of circumstance operated to rob him of his due. He has been forced to watch as a spectator an act which would never have been accomplished but for him. It is as if Stephenson for some reason had been obliged to mingle in the crowd while a more fortunate man inaugurated the first railway in England.
It is almost impossible to overestimate the geographical and commercial significance of the news that the English ships belonging to the syndicate started by Mr. Albert Grey and Mr. Milburn, sailed from London to Karraoul- a " port " one hundred and sixty miles up the Yenissei, where they discharged their cargoes into the river flotilla= in thirty-nine days. The ships left the Docks at the beginning of August., remained at Karraoul nineteen days, and then returned to England, which they reached after a total absence of only two months and twenty-three days.. Nor was there anything exceptional in this. Had the up- journey been as quick as the return, and had the vessels not waited at Karraoul, the period employed by the whole transaction would have been under two months. To realise the importance of the right of access into Northern Asia thus bestowed upon commerce, it is necessary to recall the fact that the huge tract of country which we call Siberia is most of it as much a terra incognita as the heart of Africa. The real Dark Continent is drained, not by the Nile, the Niger, and the Congo, but by the Lena, the Yenissei, and the Obi. Until now, Siberia has been commercially inaccessible. On the south, it is bounded by the most impracticable portions of China. and Turkestan,—regions through which it is impossible to penetrate. On the east of Siberia lie vast and inclement deserts, drained by rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean ; while on the west, the great Russian plain, also intersected solely by northern-flowing rivers, offers almost as complete a barrier. Siberia, in a word, looks wholly towards the north, and pours her streams, the natural means of entry, entirely in that direction. It is, then, by approaches from the north only that the country can be properly opened out. To approach from any other side is to cut across the grain. But till Captain Wiggins began his to get the navigation of the Kara Sea recognised as feasible, the possibility of reaching Siberia by sea. was looked on as a matter hardly worth discussing,. The Arctic Sea front of the Asiatic Continent was re- garded as permanently sealed by ice, and the notion of using the great water-ways of Siberia for the purpose of bringing her products to Europe was scouted as visionary and absurd. It is true that two hundred years ago Defoe, with that prevision sometimes accorded to men of letters, seems to have had a notion that the time would come when Northern Asia would be tapped by the rivers that empty themselves into the Arctic Sea. His guess of genius remained, however, without effect. Now, however, that an Englishman has thrown back the door of Siberia, it is natural enough to think of" Robinson Crusoe."' Is it possible, we wonder, that the best of boys' books first suggested to Captain Wiggins the idea of navigating the Kara Sea ? If it did, we trust he will let the world into his confidence, for no better proof of the practical utility of stimulating the imagination of the young could pos- sibly be afforded. No doubt Defoe does not in so many words suggest that England could be reached by descending the Obi ; but his treatment of the geographical phenomena. of Northern Asia strongly suggests the notion. The importance of the opening-up of a direct water-way between England and East-Central Asia, by means of which English goods may be exchanged against the pro- ducts of China and Russia with only one transhipment, hardly admits of exaggeration. If Siberia were nothing but the snow-clad desert which the writers of English melodramas imagine it, the successful navigation of the Kara Sea and of the Yenissei estuary would be merely a matter of imaginative and sentimental interest. In reality, however, Siberia has as good a climate as the Dominion of Canada, and a soil as fruitful. Instead of merely gaining access to a waste of forest and steppe, the Newcastle adven- turers are opening up a trade with a region capable of accommodating and feeding the surplus population of Europe,—a land which, when the United States are full, might compete with Australia and the highlands of Brazil for Christian settlers. The words of Baron Nordenskjiild are worth quoting in this context. It is thus he describes Siberia :—" Siberia surpasses the North American Con- tinent as to the extent of cultivatable soil. The Siberian forests are the largest in the world. Its mineral resources are immense, its climate, excepting the Tundra and the northernmost forest region, healthy, and as favourable for culture of cereals as any part of Europe. Everything seems to insure this yet so little-known land an avenir comparable to the stupendous development which 'we at present witness in the New World." When water-carriage takes the means for building railways and saw-mills, and the machinery requisite for quartz-crushing, and for prow- cuting other methods of extracting minerals, it is impossible to doubt that a land so liberally dowered by Nature will obtain full development. It is true, no doubt, that the navigation of the Yenissei and of the Obi—which we may safely assume will also be undertaken—will only be free for a couple of months each year ; but this fact, though it will make an industrial and commercial revolution in Siberia less rapid, need not prevent the development of her resources. During the period of open water, there will be plenty of time to bring into Siberia the materiel of industry in which she has been deficient. An absence of railways, and even of roads, has made it impossible hitherto to bring mining-plant into Siberia. When once, however, the great river highways have been opened, the country on each side of the two thousand miles of their respective courses will be virtually in direct water-communication with London. The Siberians will look to England, instead of to St. Petersburg or Moscow, as their source of supply for the products of civilisation.
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